Daniel Wibben Pilots OSIRIS-REx Spacecraft

"Daniel Wibben, who spent his undergraduate and graduate years as a member of the team planning the OSIRIS-REx asteroid mission, was hired by an Arizona-based space navigation company to help steer the spacecraft to the asteroid Bennu and back. Although it's unmanned, OSIRIS-REx, NASA's spacecraft scheduled to bring back a sample from an asteroid, is not without a pilot.

"In fact, it takes nearly a dozen people — all highly skilled and experienced in deep space navigation — to steer the probe to its target, retrieve a sample and ensure its safe return to Earth. One of these people is Daniel Wibben, who graduated from the UA in June with a Ph.D. in systems engineering.

"Wibben had not yet defended his dissertation when he was offered a job with KinetX Aerospace, a company specializing in deep space navigation based in Tempe, Arizona."

Please read the rest of the UANews article here.

(The article also appeared on The University of Arizona Main Page!)