{"427091":{"#nid":"427091","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Dave Spencer elected to American Astronautical Society Board","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EAE Professor David A. Spencer has been elected to a three-year term on the American Astronautical Society\u0027s (AAS) Board of Directors, effective immediately.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe appointment was made December 15 during the AAS\u0027s scheduled Board of Directors meeting.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0022Since membership is the lifeblood of the organization, my focus as a board member is to develop initiatives that can spur membership growth, especially with students and those at the beginning of their careers in aerospace,\u0022\u0026nbsp;said Spencer.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0022I would also like to pursue the establishment of an AAS section in the Southeast, drawing upon the outstanding universities and aerospace companies in the region.\u0022\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EFounded in 1954, the AAS is recognized for the excellence of its technical meetings, symposia, publications and its impact on the U.S. space program. The organization has more than 1,400 members worldwide and produces one of the field\u0027s leading aerospace publications, the\u0026nbsp;\u003Cem\u003EJournal of Astronutical Sciences\u003C\/em\u003E.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIn addition to teaching and mentoring students at GT-AE, Spencer serves as the director of the Center for Space Systems, a multi-disciplinary education and research center dedicated to excellence in space system engineering. He is the principal investigator for the U.S. Air Forces\u0027 Prox-1 mission, a spacecraft that will perform proximity operations for space situational awareness in low-Earth orbit. He also leads the Small Probes for Orbital Return of Experiments (SPORE) investigation within the NASA Small Business Technology Transfer program. The SPORE flight system architecture will utilize a modular design approach to provide low-cost on-orbit operation and recovery of small payloads.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ESpencer also leads mission operations for the Planetary Society\u0027s LightSail-1 project, which seeks to demonstrate the deployment and controlled acceleration of a solar sail in Earth orbit.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EPrior to joining Georgia Tech\u0027s faculty, Spencer spent 17 years with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, serving as the deputy project manager for the Phoenix Mars Lander, the mission manager for the Deep Impact and Mars Odyssey projects, and the mission designer for Mars Pathfinder.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAt Georgia Tech, Spencer is conducting research on the application of collaborative observations for mapping chemical distributions in the coastal oceans. In this approach, aerial or orbital remote sensing observations provide an initial distribution that seeds an in situ survey by a network of instrumented underwater vehicles. In partnership with the NASA Langley Research Center and the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, such a system is being developed for the mapping of oxygen-depleted zones in coastal waters.\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":"","field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"AE Professor David A. Spencer has been elected to a three-year term on the American Astronautical Society\u0027s (AAS) Board of Directors, effective immediately."}],"uid":"27456","created_gmt":"2015-07-21 15:40:08","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:19:12","author":"Britanny Grace","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2015-01-06T00:00:00-05:00","iso_date":"2015-01-06T00:00:00-05:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"groups":[{"id":"1239","name":"School of Aerospace Engineering"}],"categories":[{"id":"134","name":"Student and Faculty"}],"keywords":[{"id":"126771","name":"AAS"},{"id":"2082","name":"aerospace engineering"},{"id":"98181","name":"David Spencer"}],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[],"email":[],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}