Lars Blackmore

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Lars Blackmore is an electrical engineer and specialist author and is currently working primarily on research and development on problems relating to the landing control of spacecraft . At the American space company SpaceX , for which he has been working since 2011, he is responsible for the development of the control technology for the recovery system for the first stage of their rockets .

The first successful landing of an undamaged Falcon 9 - first stage on December 21, 2015 in Falcon 9 flight 20 and thus the first successful landing of a rocket in an orbital flight ever. Lars Blackmore was responsible for developing the control technology for the return system

During the extensive development work for the landing of rocket stages with the test vehicles Grasshopper and Falcon 9 Reusable Development Vehicles and the further development work with Falcon 9 rockets, which were actually used for space transport, he was responsible for the area of ​​steering and control . On December 21, 2015, the company successfully landed a rocket stage on Earth for the first time with Falcon 9 Flight 20 .

In his book Robust Execution for Stochastic Hybrid Systems published in 2008 . Algorithms for Control, Estimation and Learning he deals with basic algorithms for the control, monitoring, motion estimation and self-learning of autonomous underwater vehicles , planetary rovers and space probes .

Life

Studies, internships, projects

After attending high school , Lars Blackmore completed a year, 1998–1999, at British Aerospace's Sponsored Undergraduate Gap Year program with internships in the company, theoretical lessons and a project.

Lars Blackmore then obtained a Master of Engineering there after studying electrical engineering at Cambridge University in England .

During his studies at Cambridge he already completed numerous internships,

  • 2000 at British Aerospace , Anti-Skid Braking Control and Modeling for A3XX Aircraft (control of the anti-lock brake and modeling of A3XX aircraft),
  • 2001 at Airbus UK in the Project Management Team and
  • 2002 in the Airbus Industrie Wing Landing Gear Team there in the Structures and Crashworthiness Project (structural and collision safety project) and in the
  • NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in the Control and Modeling for Thermal Vacuum Chambers department supervised by Ted Dyer, Head of Magnetics Testing and Bob Vernier, Head of Testing.

2002-2003 he worked, supervised by Professor Keith Glover, Head of Cambridge University Engineering Department (Dean of the Faculty of Engineering), on a project Control and Modeling in Formula One (dt .: Control and Modeling in Formula 1 ) with McLaren Formula One International .

From 2003 to 2004 he worked, supervised by Prof. Jon How (MIT) and Mark Gillan from Jaguar, on a project on estimation in Formula One in the Jaguar Formula One Racing Team .

His summer internship in 2005 took Lars Blackmore to the Planetary Robotics Laboratory of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory , where he worked under the supervision of Dr. Eric Baumgartner and Brett Kennedy designed and tested new methods for force estimation and contact detection with next-generation limbed planetary rover hardware , for example: the force estimation and contact location for next-generation planetary rover hardware .

In 2006 a case study took him to the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute . There, supervised by Kanna Rajan, in the Autonomy group he developed optimization methods for route planning for autonomous underwater vehicles .

In 2006 he also completed an internship at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the Advanced Robotic Controls Group , where he was supervised by Homayoun Seraji. He helped develop a new concept for the selection of a Mars landing site and won a prize of $ 30,000 for the concept.

In 2007 he earned a doctorate , Ph.D. , at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Control and Estimation (analogously: control and forecasting / forecasting)

NASA

From 2007 to 2011 he worked at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory as a senior technologist in the Guidance and Control Analysis Group (dt .: Management and Control Analysis group). There he developed control and prediction algorithms for future NASA space missions . He was a co-developer of the G-FOLD algorithm for precision landings on Mars . He was also a member of the Soil Moisture Active Passive Mission (SMAP mission), a project to develop an earth observation satellite .

SpaceX

In 2011 he joined SpaceX as Senior Guidance, Navigation and Control Engineer (analogously: Chief Engineer for Navigation and Control Technology ). About this change he said:

“I'd heard that Elon [Musk] had these dreams of making reusable rockets. And since I was working on precision landing for Mars, I thought I would be the right guy to do that. "

“I heard Elon ( Elon Musk ) had these dreams about reusable missiles. And since I was working on precision landings on Mars, I thought I was the right guy to do that. "

- Lars Blackmore

In 2015 he was appointed Principal Rocket Landing Engineer by SpaceX (meaning: Chief Rocket Landing Engineer) of the company.

Pictures of the first successful landing on an Autonomous spaceport drone ship on April 8, 2016

  • CRS-8 (25728668373) .jpg
  • CRS-8 (26265214251) .jpg
  • CRS-8 (26239020092) .jpg

When asked if he might want to return to NASA one day, Blackmore said:

“When you hear about the Apollo program in its heyday, it was a bunch of young kids, and no one told them what they could do. That is exactly what I've found at SpaceX. "

“You hear about the Apollo program in its heyday, it was like a bunch of young kids and no one was telling them what to do (and what not to do). That's exactly what I found at SpaceX. "

- Lars Blackmore

Honors

Works

Book publication

  • Robust Execution for Stochastic Hybrid Systems. Algorithms for Control, Estimation and Learning. VDM Publishing, 2008. ISBN 978-3-639-09800-6

Articles and contributions to specialist books

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Will Knight: Rocket Recycling: A Matter of Price , in Technology Review, April 26, 2016 ; accessed on June 12, 2016
  2. ↑ a b c d Archived copy ( memento of the original from March 30, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. accessed on June 12, 2016 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / web.mit.edu
  3. ^ NASA biographical entry about Lars Blackmore on the project page of the Precision Formation Flying Department of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology ; accessed on April 16, 2010 according to the website on June 12, 2016
  4. ^ NASA biographical entry about Lars Blackmore on the project page of the Precision Formation Flying Department of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology ; accessed on April 16, 2010 according to the website on June 12, 2016
  5. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from June 12, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ; accessed on June 12, 2016 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / web.mit.edu
  6. ↑ Will Knight: Rocket Recycling: A Question of Price , in Technology Review of April 26 , 2016 ; accessed on June 12, 2016
  7. ↑ https://www.technologyreview.com/lists/innovators-under-35/2015/ accessed on June 12, 2016
  8. ↑ List of Lars Blackmore's publications at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ( Memento of the original from March 2, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ; accessed on June 12, 2016 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / web.mit.edu
personal data
SURNAME Blackmore, Lars
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Electrical engineer and specialist author
DATE OF BIRTH 20th century