ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sonia HernandezSonia Hernandez is a specialist in mission design and navigation. She received her M.S. from the University of Maryland in 2009 and Ph.D. from The University of Texas at Austin in 2014. After completing her PhD, Sonia joined JPL, where she was part of the Cassini navigation team, ensuring that the spacecraft stayed on its planned trajectory course until the end of the mission. She worked on navigation for the Europa Clipper mission, the Europa Lander concept, and Dragonfly. She was also involved in small-satellite formation design missions, including SunRISE, a six spacecraft constellation mission set to be the first space-based interferometer. She joined Continuum Space Systems in 2021, a small startup company, where she is the lead mission design and navigation engineer.
Co-Author of the following article of the DESCANSO Design & Performance Summary Series - Telecommunications: