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DART Mission Leader Ed Reynolds to Keynote IPC High Reliability
July 13, 2023 | IPCEstimated reading time: 1 minute
Ed Reynolds, space exploration sector program manager at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), will present his keynote address, “The DART Mission: Earth Strikes Back,” at IPC’s High Reliability Forum on October 17 in Linthicum (Baltimore), Md.
Leading NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission, the first-ever demonstration of asteroid deflection technology, Reynolds and his team from APL, industry, academia and government, made history on September 26, 2022. DART — envisioned, built and managed by APL — changed the orbit of a celestial body for the first time in human history, successfully validating the concept of kinetic impactors as a method to protect Earth and mankind from future asteroid impacts.
During his keynote, Reynolds will discuss the overall DART mission and its development, describing the purpose of the mission and its place in the overall planetary defense strategic plan. He will also cover mission and spacecraft design and new technologies being validated, with special emphasis on the factors affecting reliability, design and implementation decisions that were made during the spacecraft’s development and flight.
Reynolds’ experience with asteroid missions runs deep. He was a systems engineer during the concept stages for NASA’s Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR), the first mission to orbit and land on an asteroid. Reynolds began his APL career in 1985 as a space integration and test engineer working on missions such as the Polar BEAR spacecraft, the Special Purpose Inexpensive Satellite altimeter (SALT) program’s Miniature Radar Altimeter Payload, the Nuclear Electric Propulsion Space Test Program (NEPSTP) spacecraft and the Active Geophysical Rocket Experiment (AGRE).
Reynolds has a master’s degree in project management from the George Washington University and a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Virginia Tech.
For more information on IPC High Reliability Forum including agenda, speaker profiles, exhibition and sponsorship information, or to register for event, visit www.ipc.org/event/high-reliability-forum.
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