Thomas R. Spilker

Thomas R. Spilker earned his M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University's Space Telecommunications and Radioscience Laboratory. Before his retirement, he was a Principal Mission Architect for planetary space flight missions at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Since retirement, he has worked as an independent consultant. Involved in both the engineering and science aspects of solar system exploration, he has participated in the initiation and analysis of innovative planetary flight mission concepts since 1992. He has worked on the project teams for NASA's and ESA's Voyager, Cassini/Huygens, Genesis, and Rosetta missions, including proposal, development, and flight operations phases. Tom was the charter Science Representative for JPL's TeamX, and received JPL's Award for Excellence in 2000 for his architecture definition and feasibility analysis for the Saturn Ring Observer mission concept.