JPL DESCANSO - Deep Space Communications and Navigation Center of Excellence

Biography

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David Hansen

David Hansen received a B.S. from Cornell University in 1979, with a major in electrical engineering. He received an M.S. in electrical engineering from Stanford in 1980. He joined the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Telecommunications Systems Section in 1980.


David has worked in telecommunications systems development for numerous missions including Mars Observer and Deep Impact (DI). David has also worked flight operations for Voyager and Galileo.


David switched sections in 1990 and worked on flight hardware. He did testing of the Mars Observer command detector units (CDUs). He was Cognizant Engineer for a newer CDU for Cassini, Mars Pathfinder, and Near-Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR). He also supported delivery of the Cassini flight telemetry control units (TCUs).


After Cassini, David returned to the Telecommunications Systems Section and has supported numerous proposals for future deep-space missions and also worked with Team X, an internal advanced development team at JPL. When the Deep Impact mission was selected, David became its telecom lead, working with Ball Aerospace. This effort included delivering the flight transponders, traveling-wave tube amplifiers (TWTAs), S-band relay radios, and S-band antennas to Ball for DI.


David most recently served as the system engineer for the Juno Telecom Subsystem, and he is a senior engineer in the Flight Communications Systems Section.


Co-Author of the following articles of the DESCANSO Design & Performance Summary Series - Telecommunications: