Aerospace Engineering Seminar Series: Stefan Bianiawski "Precise and Safe Lunar Landings: Challenges and Risk Reduction using New Shepard Flight Test"

Abstract: We begin this talk with an overview of Blue Origin.  We follow by discussing the challenges of safe and precise landing on the Lunar South Pole.  Under the public-private Tipping Point partnership, two suborbital flights were performed using New Shepard to gather data on precision landing sensors. The flights collected data from NASA provided landing sensors, a commercial landing sensor, and host vehicle truth data for comparison. The flights significantly expanded the operational envelope of the sensors, achieving altitudes exceeding 100 km, speeds exceeding 1000 m/s, and included a propulsive landing. In this paper we provide a summary of the flights, including overview of payloads, preparations, and execution.  We review the performance of the host vehicle and the commercial LiDAR. These flights were the first uses of the New Shepard Propulsion Module as a testbed for payloads.

Speaker Bio: Stefan Bieniawski leads the formulation team at Blue Origin within its Advanced Concepts and Enterprise Engineering.  His team is focused on future products and systems along with leveraging the latest technology developments.  Stefan has been with Blue Origin for 8 years, with the last three in his current role. Previously he was the Principal Technologist for Autonomy, Guidance, Navigation and Control developing technologies for Blue Origin’s lunar landers.  Prior to Blue Origin, Stefan was a Technical Fellow at Boeing Research and Technology with over 20 years experience working on advanced flight control for commercial and military aircraft.  Stefan obtained his Ph.D. from Stanford University in Aeronautics and Astronautics and his Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees from Penn State University in Aerospace Engineering.