Spencer, an aerospace engineering (AE) professor, is the principal investigator for Prox-1, a mission designed to demonstrate automated trajectory control in low-Earth orbit relative to a deployed CubeSat. The project, which was designed, fabricated and tested by a team of undergraduate and graduate students, has given students important experience in proximity operations.

UNP is a two-year satellite design competition that culminated in the Flight Competition Review in Albuquerque, N.M., this week. It’s sponsored by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the Air Force Research Laboratory.

As the competition’s winner, the Tech team will receive an Air Force launch slot as a secondary payload and extra development funding over the next two years. Launches for this class of payload would typically cost between $3 million and $5 million.

The team is working toward a launch in 2015, and the students who designed the project will also be responsible for mission operations.

Spencer has been on the Georgia Tech faculty since 2008, after spending 17 years at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. There, he was deputy project manager for the Phoenix Mars Lander, mission manager for the Deep Impact and Mars Odyssey projects, and mission designer for Mars Pathfinder.