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Mikhail Kokorich
President & Founder
Before Momentus, Mikhail Kokorich founded a number of other New Space companies: Dauria Aerospace, Helios Wire and Astro Digital. He studied as physicist in Novosibirsk State University, did his EMBA in The Moscow School of Management Skolkovo, and graduated from the Stanford Executive Program.
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Lev Khasis, PhD
Chairman & Founder
As former Senior Vice President at Wal-Mart Stores Inc. with a PhD in Aerospace Engineering and a PhD in Economics, Khasis is uniquely positioned to guide Momentus to success.
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Joel Sercel, PhD
Chief Technology Officer
Sercel is a world recognized authority in technical innovation and space technology with a PhD from Caltech in microwave plasma propulsion and over three decades of success in engineering and leadership across multiple disciplines. A former Principal Engineer and Project Manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory with 15 years of entrepreneurial success Sercel has a long history of leading first in space and advanced technology. When at JPL, Sercel formulated the NSTAR project which lead to the first deep space application of ion propulsion and the Dawn spacecraft flying to the asteroids Vesta and Ceres. Sercel is a three time NASA Innovative Advance Concepts (NIAC) Fellow and a leading expert on how to harvest water from planetary bodies and use it for space transportation services.
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Yuqi Wang
Aerospace Engineer
Yuqi joins the team as an experienced propulsion engineer who has worked at SpaceX and earned his masters degree from UCLA.
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Christian Sallaberger, PhD
Board Member
Sallaberger is Chairman of the International Space Exploration Committee of the IAF, initiated the Canadian Planetary Exploration Program and is a professor at Toronto University. He earned degrees from the University of Waterloo, the University of California at Berkeley, and received his doctorate from the University of Toronto.
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Charlie Feng
Aerospace Engineer
Feng is an experienced propulsion engineer with a thirst for problem solving across the digital and physical worlds. He has worked at Sandia National Laboratory, Busek Co. Inc. and earned his masters degree from Michigan University.
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Philip Mainwaring
Head of Propulsion
Mainwaring brings extensive engineering experience across aerospace propulsion and software. He has worked at Firefly, Esgee Technologies, and earned his masters degree from Penn State.
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Mark Crawford
Aerospace Engineer
An accomplished aerospace engineer, Mark has worked with TransAstra Corporation providing thermodynamic and numerical simulation, design, and systems engineering support for their research into space resources and asteroid mining. Previously he worked at M4 Engineering Inc where he was involved in R&D for nonlinear dynamic simulation of aerospace structures subject to unstable flow. He received his MS in mechanical engineering from UCLA in 2016.
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Negar Feher
VP of Product and BD
Negar is an ambassador in bringing diverse capabilities to new space markets with an M.S. in Aerospace Engineering from Stanford University and over a decade of experience in the space industry. She was instrumental in establishing services to support startups seeking to validate and test their spacecraft systems.
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Aliki Loper-Leddy
Program Manager
Aliki brings engineering experience from detailed spacecraft design to systems engineering. She has a background in Geostationary Satellite Design and spacecraft development at SSL. She earned her BS in Aerospace Engineering from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.
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Matt Parman
Aerospace Engineer
Matt is an experienced mechanical engineer with broad experience across the domains of thermal and structural design and analysis of space hardware. He has worked on RF electronics and antenna arrays at SSL and is working on his Masters degree in Space Systems Engineering from Johns Hopkins University.
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Aaron Mitchell
Systems Engineer
Aaron is an accomplished propulsion and systems engineer with experience working on a wide variety of spacecraft designs. Previously at NASA-JPL, he focused on designing in-space propulsion systems for interplanetary missions. He earned his BS in Astronautical Engineering from University of Southern California.
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Alexander Wicks
VP of Space Engineering
Alex has over two decades of engineering and management experience on innovative projects spanning sub-sea systems, small satellites and geostationary communications payloads. His main focus has been small satellites, where he is equally experienced in analysis, concept development and execution of missions. He has worked at SIL, SSTL, Oceanworks, Maxar and Urthecast, and earned a Masters at the University of Surrey.
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Dakin Sloss
Board Member
Dakin Sloss is Founder and General Partner of Prime Movers Lab. He also serves as Chairman of Tachyus, where as the founding CEO he built the leading prescriptive analytics company in the oil and gas industry. Dakin also co-founded OpenGov, where as CEO he recruited the core team, secured millions in angel funding and venture capital, arranged the initial pilot partnerships, and launched the world’s most advanced smart government platform. Before OpenGov, he built California Common Sense, the premiere California open data and government watchdog non-profit. Dakin earned a BS in Mathematics from Stanford University in 2011. In 2016, Dakin was recognized as the featured Forbes 30 Under 30 energy entrepreneur. In 2017, he was named as a San Francisco Business Times 40 Under 40 honoree.
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Michael M. Micci, Ph.D
Advisor
Michael M. Micci is a Professor of Aerospace Engineering at The Pennsylvania State University where he had served since 1981. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering from The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and his Ph.D. from Princeton University. He teaches and conducts research in the area of rocket propulsion, including both chemical and electric spacecraft propulsion. He is an Associate Fellow of AIAA.
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Sven Bilén, Ph.D., P.E.
Advisor
Bilén is professor of engineering design, electrical engineering, and aerospace engineering at Penn State and has worked to advance microwave electrothermal thruster systems and technology for the past two decades. He brings his extensive background and experience in plasma physics processes and diagnostics; high voltage and RF/microwave systems; and dynamic processes within various types of plasma systems. As an experimentalist, he has built many plasma systems and related diagnostics and has been involved in the engineering of new plasma sources and devices. He has extensive experience in space systems design with vacuum-testing programs and testing of spacecraft hardware in thermal–vacuum and in plasma environments. He has developed and flown space hardware on several different platforms, from the Space Shuttle to CubeSats. He is a Senior Member of IEEE and Associate Fellow of AIAA. He is a registered professional engineer in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
