Mid-Atlantic Section

Abstract: The Mars Perseverance Rover, scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in July, will look for signs of life in Jezero Crater, an ancient river delta in Mars' northern hemisphere. The spacecraft carries an array of instruments to accomplish that goal, including a first of its kind planetary sample caching system to take core samples in Jezero Crater, and revolutionary technology demonstrations for converting Martian atmosphere into Oxygen and performing the first powered flight on another planet. Bio: Michael Staab is a Fault Management and System Autonomy Principal Engineer at Northrop Grumman Corporation, supporting fault management and system autonomy design for the Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Draper Laboratories Human Lander System entry and the NASA Gateway program. In his time with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, he was a Flight System Systems Engineer for the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar Mission, a Spacecraft Systems Engineer and Flight Director for the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity, a flight controller, or ACE, for the Cassini spacecraft, and a Mission Systems’ Systems Engineer for the Mars 2020 rover. Michael is a PhD student in the Department of Astronautical Engineering at the University of Southern California, with research interests in autonomy, system resiliency, and fault management. Additionally, Michael is an Aerospace Engineering Duty Officer in the United States Navy Reserves, supporting the NAVAIR and Navy Space Cadre communities. Michael holds a Bachelors of Science in Aerospace Engineering from Wichita State University and a Masters of Science in Aerospace Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
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