Events

Engineering Education and Research Center (EER) – Texas Innovation Center – 2nd Floor, 2.518

About the Speaker:

Sharad Bhaskaran is the Senior Program Manager in the Landers & Spacecraft department at Astrobotic. Most recently, he was the Mission Director for Astrobotic’s first commercial robotic spacecraft, the Peregrine lunar lander, which launched in January 2024 from Cape Canaveral. Bhaskaran managed program budget, schedule, and resources and led the engineering team since 2016 in the development, integration, testing, launch and operations of the lander. Prior to joining Astrobotic, Bhaskaran had 25 years of space industry experience with Lockheed Martin, starting with structural analyses on Space Shuttle Spacelab Life Sciences 1 & 2 Express Racks. He then transitioned to the NASA/Mir Program as Project Integration Lead, working with the Russian Space Agency on acceptance of US science payloads for use on the Mir Space Station. After the Mir Program, he supported the development of various science payloads and crew support equipment for ISS including the Human Research Facility which is still operational. His last assignment at Lockheed was as Program Manager for a $300M NASA Ames Research Center engineering, science and technical services prime contract. The broad-based contract included support to ISS payload development, SOFIA, Kepler, and the Astrobiology Institute. Sharad holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Texas.