Voyager Spacecraft
Come join AIAA-SF for food and fun at our 2024 Annual Banquet on November 23rd. Help us celebrate with this year’s Section Awards winners. Your ticket includes lunch, admission to the Chabot Space & Science Center and its exhibits, including the NASA Ames visitor center (https://chabotspace.org/), and a presentation from our special guest Todd Barber about the long history, and ongoing travels, of the Voyager 1 & 2 spacecraft.
Voyagers 1 and 2 started off on an ambitious journey to explore the outer planets in our solar system, including two that had not been visited before. Along the way, they made many incredible discoveries. Now, more than 47 years later, they continue to perform an important role in interplanetary science. But their explorations have not been without challenges; in recent months, there have been issues that threatened the continuation of their mission. Come hear an overview of the Voyager program, and the ingenious ways that NASA overcomes obstacles to keep the spacecraft running.
Todd J. Barber is a JPL senior propulsion engineer, spending two decades as lead propulsion engineer on the Cassini mission to Saturn, following part-time work on the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission, Deep Impact mission, and the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission, which landed the large rover Curiosity on the red planet on August 5th, 2012. Cassini was launched on October 15, 1997 on its two-billion-mile, seven-year journey to the ringed planet. It “took the plunge” into Saturn’s atmosphere in 2017 after thirteen years in orbit around Saturn. The MER team launched twin rovers to the red planet in June and July of 2003, and Spirit and Opportunity lasted six years and fourteen years, respectively, into their three-month missions. Todd also worked as the lead impactor propulsion engineer on Deep Impact, which successfully crashed into Comet Tempel-1 on Independence Day, 2005, at twenty-three-thousand miles per hour. Todd recently completed working on the Dawn mission, an ion propulsion mission to the two largest main-belt asteroids, Vesta and Ceres. He also recently began supporting the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission and was the Mars2020 propulsion lead engineer for operations. Much to Todd’s delight, he is now supporting the Voyager mission as well, more than forty years after launch, along with the recently launched Europa Clipper mission.
Mr. Barber worked on the Galileo project for over seven years and his primary responsibility was getting Galileo into Jupiter orbit on December 7, 1995. Todd also worked part-time on the Space Infra-Red Telescope Facility (SIRTF) mission and on the Stardust mission, as well as the Mars Sample Return mission and a Mars airplane study. Todd received NASA’s Exceptional Achievement Award in 1996 for his work on Galileo. In 2018, Mr. Barber was also honored to receive NASA’s Exceptional Public Service Medal for heading up Cassini’s propulsion team for nearly two decades.
Mr. Barber is a native of Wichita, Kansas, and attended MIT between 1984 and 1990, obtaining B.S. and M.S. degrees in aerospace engineering, with a humanities concentration in music. He is also a composer of church choral music, with two pieces published to date. His hobbies include singing charitably and professionally, playing the piano, snagging degree confluences (exact integer latitude/longitude intersections), visiting all the U.S. tri-state corners and national parks, playing basketball (though it’s been a while), and amateur astronomy.
Schedule (approximate):
10:00 Museum opens
12:00 Room opens, lunch begins
12:30 Awards presentation
1:00 Guest speaker
1:45 Q&A
2:00 Networking
2:30 Room closes
5:00 Museum closes
Come as early as 10:00 am, or stay as late as 5:00 pm, to explore Chabot
Online registration is required. Tickets include lunch and admission to Chabot Space & Science Center as well as the NASA Ames Visitor Center. Tickets will not be sold at the event.
Register here:
https://aiaa-sf.org/registration/