Don Pearson

Hi, my name is Don Pearson and I’ve been working in the NASA space biz for 25 years, involved in mission design and rendezvous operations. Over the years, my team has worked to develop techniques to have one space vehicle chase down and capture another spacecraft. It’s much easier said than done.  Chasing it down involves a lot of orbital mechanics and navigation algorithms.  Capturing it always a unique experience – how do you slowly approach another massive spacecraft and do it safely?  How to you grab onto it and where do you grab on?  Did you contaminate it on your approach?  The division of JSC that does this is our “Flight Design and Dynamics Division” in the famous Missions Operations Directorate.  We are responsible for both the permission planning and the realtime execution aspects of mission design and trajectory control. 

I’ve developed our Shuttle rendezvous concepts and also several of the ground and onboard software algorithms used in the mission control center. I’ve managed the flight controllers who do this trajectory control and I’m currently working on new ways to successfully perform rendezvous autonomously beyond low earth orbit, either around the Moon or at Mars.   If you like math and astronomy, this is a cool area to be in.

On the personal side, I was born and raised in St Louis Missouri. I went to undergraduate school at the University of Virginia getting a Bachelor’s Degree in Astronomy and Physics.  I received my Masters Degree from Washington University in St Louis and began working here in Houston in 1976.  I’m married with a son now in college at St Louis University. Their engineering school is called “Parks College”, well known in the Aviation field, which is what he is studying.  In my spare time, I brew beer, enjoy sailing, and spend a lot of time programming in Java (much to my wife’s grief). 

I look forward to our interactions together.

Last Updated: 06/20/01