Steering Committee

Dr. Dean Bergman

Honeybee Robotics

Dr. Dean Bergman's expertise includes interplanetary sample collection and delivery, structural mechanics and analog testing. He is currently the director of business development at Honeybee Robotics in Pasadena, CA. He previously was the risk manager in the flight project office for the Resource Prospector mission at NASA Ames Research Center. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship at NASA Ames where he researched diagnostic methods for autonomously detecting faults in interplanetary drilling missions. He obtained a PhD in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Southern California where he focused on modelling of novel deployable space structures. His undergrad was in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Cape Town.

Benjamin Galke

NASA Langley Research Center

Benjamin Galke currently works in the Center Operations Directorate at Langley Research Center as the Associate Director for Strategic Transformation and Branch Head of the Strategic Infrastructure Transformation Office. The Center Operations Directorate is responsible for Operating, Revitalizing and Sustaining Langley Research Center to enable mission success now and in the future. The Strategic Infrastructure Transformation Office plans and guides the people, infrastructure, and technology in revitalizing Langley.

Prior to his appointment as Associate Director for Strategic Transformation, Mr. Galke worked as a controls engineer specializing in process control and automation in the consumer products manufacturing, brewing industry, and as a NASA contractor. He began his NASA Civil Servant career in Facility Project Management, transitioned to Standard Practice Engineer for Facility Automation Systems, and then Deputy Chief Engineer / Senior Safety Engineer. Throughout these roles, Mr. Galke demonstrated technical excellence and Leadership in management and oversight of large ground systems projects in various wind tunnels, ground test facilities, and the LaRC high pressure air generating facility. Mr. Galke has extensive experience designing, constructing, operating, upgrading, and maintaining industrial systems in both private and public sectors, ground test facilities automation at NASA, prototype design and development, software development, systems design, technical/safety authority, strategic planning, and project management. Mr. Galke holds a bachelor of science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Missouri-Rolla.

Dr. Steven Hoffman

Aerospace Corporation

Dr. Stephen Hoffman is an Engineering Specialist with the Aerospace Corporation. He has 40 years of experience working in civilian space programs performing tasks involving program management, interplanetary mission planning, preliminary spacecraft design, orbit mechanics, and planetary analog missions. Dr. Hoffman is currently supporting the Exploration Mission Planning Office at the NASA Johnson Space Center. He supports a variety of mission studies and concept assessments associated with human exploration beyond low Earth orbit for this office.

During his career Dr. Hoffman has participated in the design and implementation of field tests of candidate systems and operations for future human exploration of the Moon and Mars. He has carried out these tests in a variety of analog environments, including: five personal deployments and support for four other deployments to locations in the Arctic (Devon Island, Elsmere Island, and Greenland); three deployments with NASA’s Desert RATS program in the U.S. desert southwest (Silver Lake, CA and Meteor Crater, AZ); part of the team that initiated and facilitated the NASA-NSF-ILC/Dover year-long field test of an inflatable habitat in the Antarctic (McMurdo Station). He is currently the lead for an international group, the Analogue Action Team (AAT), which supports the International Space Exploration Coordination Group (ISECG). In this position he has lead the development of the analogues portion of ISECG’s Global Exploration Roadmap (GER).

Stephen Hoffman received a B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering from the University of Illinois in 1978 (summa cum laude), 1980, and 1984, respectively. He has published over 80 conference papers, journal articles, and technical reports in the areas of solid propellant hazards, future space mission planning, aero-assisted orbit mechanics, and on-orbit satellite servicing.

Sharon Jefferies

NASA Langley Research Center

Sharon Jefferies is an aerospace engineer in the Space Mission Analysis Branch at NASA Langley Research Center. She is currently the Deputy for Cross-Program Integration for the Gateway Systems Engineering and Integration activity. Previously, she led architecture integration for the NASA Evolvable Mars Campaign. She graduated in 1995 from the U.S. Military Academy with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering. After serving in the Army, she joined NASA in 2006 where she has been performing campaign, architecture, and systems concept development and analysis for lunar, NEA, and Mars mission studies. In addition to her broader integration work, she has had a particular focus on development and incorporation of mobility and robotics systems into human exploration architectures, including mission analog testing through NASA Desert Research and Technology Studies.

Dr. Christopher Jones

NASA Langley Research Center

Dr. Christopher Jones works in the Space Mission Analysis Branch at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, VA. His current work includes designing and implementing a Value Framework for articulating benefits, costs, and risks for Earth Science observing systems, applying decision science methods to improve decision-making across the agency, and performing technology assessments in support NASA’s current and future exploration goals. His previous work includes leadership of the facilitation and analysis team for a science and technology partnership among NASA, the U.S. Space Force, and the National Reconnaissance Office, evaluation of the architectural trades of using lunar resources for human missions on the Moon and to Mars, and development of two Venus atmospheric exploration concepts. He obtained his Masters and Ph.D. in aerospace engineering from Georgia Tech in 2009 and 2016, respectively, and his Bachelors in mechanical engineering from the University of South Carolina in 2007.

Kevin Kempton

NASA Langley Research Center

Kevin Kempton is currently a Program Element Manager in NASA’s Game Changing Development (GCD) Program and also a challenge coordinator for the Prizes and Challenges Program. He recently led the development of the Mars Ice Home habitat design study through the Center Innovation Fund and is now leading a concept study for a mobile lunar gantry. Mr. Kempton was also the PI for a study called PHLOTE (Phobos L1 Operational Tether Experiment) through the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts Program. Previously, Mr. Kempton was the project manager for the Autonomous Landing and Hazard Avoidance Technology (ALHAT) Sensor Development at Langley where he planned and supported the integration and flight test campaigns that led up to the successful flight test of the ALHAT system on the Morpheus vehicle at KSC. Before ALHAT, Mr. Kempton was the Lead Systems Engineer for the CLARREO Climate Mission Development. He also served as the Lead Systems Engineer and Verification Manager for the Ares I-X Demonstration Flight Test and was awarded the NASA Exceptional Achievement Award as well as the Space Flight Awareness Award for leadership and innovations in systems engineering. When time allows, Mr. Kempton enjoys woodworking, carving, building RC airplanes and crafting new things from unusual materials.

Dr. Robert Moses

NASA Langley Research Center

Dr. Robert "Bob" Moses joined NASA in 1989 and immediately contributed to flight test teams developing hardware for Shuttle missions. In 1991, he participated in the launch of his first hardware mission onboard Atlantis, STS-37. Following this successful launch, he entered a NASA-sponsored graduate program through which he successfully obtained his doctorate degree in 1997 from Stanford University.

After graduation in 1997 until 2003, Dr. Moses participated in a multi-national aeronautics program to solve and control unsteady aerodynamics on twin-tail fighters, resulting in the redesign of the F-22 and the Joint Strike Fighter. In addition, during this timeframe, he created a new entry, descent and landing (EDL) technology called Regenerative Aerobraking to recapture some of the energy lost during aerobraking at Mars. In 2004, he joined the Exploration Engineering Branch in the Systems Engineering Directorate (now Engineering Directorate) at LaRC and won several Agency-level bid proposal opportunities under the Exploration Mission Directorate for “In-Space Assembly of Modular Structures” and “Inflatable Decelerators for Return from the Moon”.

Shortly after the start of the Constellation Program, he joined the Constellation Program Flight Test Office based at Johnson Space Center to co-lead the development of the Integrated Flight Test Strategy that created the flight demonstration manifest aimed at retiring risk prior to docking a human-rated Orion with the ISS. After Constellation, Robert remained in the Exploration Engineering Branch, which later became the Atmospheric Flight and Entry Systems Branch (AFESB), where he is still currently assigned.

Dr. Moses has focused his attention on exploring advanced, emerging technologies for space exploration, returning to the work that he enjoyed doing with the regenerative aerobraking concept. In this capacity, he has served in a variety of leadership and support roles over time. In 2010-2013, Dr. Moses participated in several studies to explore options for aerocapture and aerobraking at Uranus, Neptune, and Mars that included replacing ablative Thermal Protection Systems with Durable Thermal Structures and its reusability.

Since 2014, Dr. Moses organized, lead, and participated in a variety of NASA Langley Research Center Blue Sky Workshops and Follow-on Studies to explore solution spaces to resolve grand challenges facing human missions to Mars; these studies include In Situ Resource Utilization, Reusable Landers and Mars Ascent Vehicles, Reusable Rockets and other Mission Elements, Galactic Cosmic Ray (GCR) Radiation Shielding, Human Health Issues and Mitigation Strategies such as Fast Transits to/from Mars, and other topics affecting Mars Sustainability. Robert mentors PhD students within the NASA Space Technology Research Fellowship (NSTRF) Program conducting research in a variety of aerospace concepts.

He currently serves on NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate’s In Situ Resource Utilization Systems Capabilities Leadership Team and serves as the Principal Investigator for the Lunar Safe Haven Study funded by Game Changing Development Program. Robert served as the Principal Investigator for the NIAC Phase 1 Study on “Advanced Aerocapture System for Enabling Faster-Larger Planetary Science & Human Exploration Missions” (19-NIAC20B-0128).

Dr. Keith Nicewarner

SpaceX

Dr. Keith Nicewarner has been working at SpaceX for over 11 years, is working on the Starship program and is the lead for Mars surface robotics. Most of his career was in autonomy or robotics, including in-space autonomous assembly of truss structures, an autorouter for low-observable aircraft, autonomous micro air vehicles, mobile ground robots for the military, a robotic astronaut assistant for the space station, an intelligent micro-satellite, and autonomous rockets and spacecraft. He has a BSEE from Louisiana Tech University and a PhD in Computer and Systems Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. His specialties are software engineering, path planning, control systems, sensor fusion, and vision processing. Key areas of interest involve robotic Mars surface ops, including ice mining, equipment placement, surface prep, and maintenance.

Gerald Sanders

NASA Johnson Space Center

Gerald Sanders has worked at the NASA Johnson Space Center full time for over 32 years in the Propulsion and Power Division of the Engineering Directorate, and has extensive experience in propulsion, fluid systems, and In Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU). Mr. Sanders currently serves as the ISRU System Capability Leadership Team (SCLT) Lead in the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate (HEOMD) and Co-Investigator for Human Mission Extensibility for the Mars OXygen Isru Experiment (MOXIE) for the Mars 2020 rover. As the ISRU SCLT, he serves as the technical steward for the Agency on ISRU system-level capabilities that span multiple Mission Directorates and Centers, leads roadmap activities to inform mission planning work and investment strategies, and serves as Agency-wide resource to help NASA missions leverage technologies, facilities, and workforce unique to the capability. He received his B.S. degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Cincinnati in 1987.