SELECTED PROJECTS

On-orbit Servicing Where To Play Analysis

Leveraging the “Where to Play” methodology developed at EPFL and Technion, I assessed the unique capabilities either currently in the Voyager portfolio, or planned for future development or acquisition to brainstorm potential in-space servicing, assembly, and manufacturing (ISAM) market opportunities that Voyager could potentially pursue. I then evaluated the most promising market opportunities both on the basis of value creation potential and on the perceived challenges to Voyager capturing that value potential. Based on those results, I was able to downselect to the four most promising market opportunities to pursue.

Since performing this analysis in late 2021, I was able to support Voyager portfolio companies in submitting over a dozen NASA, DIU, and Space Force proposals related to these four market opportunity areas, resulting in over half a dozen contract wins, worth over $1.5M in new revenue to-date.

DogTags Grapple Fixtures

The OneWeb LEO broadband constellation is in the process of launching over 600 satellites into a nearly 1200km operating orbit. At that altitude, a satellite that failed prematurely could stay on-orbit for hundreds of years. As part of their responsible space initiative, OneWeb decided to design all of their satellites with grapple fixtures that could enable a space tug to safely and reliably grapple a failed Oneweb satellite, and tow it to down a safe disposal orbit that would reenter in less than a year or two.

At OneWeb’s request, I spearheaded the Altius team that invented a universal grappling interface that was less than 1/4 the mass of their original design, significantly cheaper, and most importantly, could be grasped by a wide range of capture technologies, including magnetic grappling. This development involved collaborating with a wide range of manufacturing partners, and with other satellite servicing developers to ensure intercompatibility. We also had to win a competition with other competing industry grappling interfaces. To-date, around 350 DogTags have been launched on OneWeb satellites, making it one of the most mass-produced satellite grappling fixtures in history.

Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge

In 2009, I was the lead propulsion engineer at Masten Space Systems, while Masten was competing in a NASA-sponsored prize for vertical takeoff and landing rocket powered landers, called the Lunar Lander Challenge. In less than six months we went from our first stable tether test of a vehicle to winning two of the four prizes, including first place in the challenging Level Two competition.

For my part, I helped take the Xoie vehicle, that we won that $1M prize with, from an Excel spreadsheet what-if scenario to a rocket-powered flight vehicle in less than five months. That included designing, sourcing, fabricating, and assembling hundreds of machined and welded structures, and supporting development and testing of an innovative all-aluminum regen cooled rocket engine, supporting several flight test campaigns, and patching a giant hole we had melted through the concrete landing pad, in gale-force winds, the night before the competition.

After the NGLLC, the Xombie vehicle went on to perform an in-air relight demonstration that was a key factor in SpaceX switching to rocket powered landing for Falcon 9. Xombie also currently holds the record for the number of rocket powered flights on a single airframe, with over 270 flights. Additionally, Xombie was used to flight-test JPL’s G-FOLD landing algorithms that were then used for landing the NASA Perseverance rover on Mars in 2021.