Brandon Marsella

WORK HISTORY

EDUCATION

SKILLS

ABOUT BRANDON MARSELLA

Currently building satellite constellations for AST SpaceMobile to enable direct connectivity between standard mobile devices and terrestrial cellular networks.I previously worked as a Guidance, Navigation & Control Engineer with The Boeing Company in El Segundo, California. My career has touched many cross boundary projects at Boeing. Among my first projects was the validation of flight software for the first commercial all-electric satellite, which culminated in the successful missions of six+ satellites. I expanded beyond satellites when I developed “lost-in-space” Star Tracker algorithms for the CST-100. I advised as an Enterprise Leader and tested the algorithms for the Vision-based Electro-optical Sensor Tracking Assembly (VESTA), which was proven on the 2019 commercial crew demonstration flight. I was then asked to lead the updated design of a government satellite program as attitude control subsystem (ACS) subsystem lead.At Boeing I also supported the Customer Operations Support Center (COSC) for 5 years as a flight engineer assisting our satellite customer’s and working anomaly root cause corrective actions. I worked initially to improve the data analytics system used to parse data from the 20+ 702 fleet, eventually fully automating a 40 hour a week job to the push of a button. This work gave me the opportunity to visit 10+ customer sites in countries including France, Luxembourg, Japan and Mexico.I have also spent quite a bit of time in the Boeing Mission Control Center (MCC), supporting three missions as the ACS lead and flying 9 more in other roles.I am a graduate of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, FL where I simultaneously earned my undergraduate and graduate degrees in Aerospace Engineering. At Embry-Riddle I diligently worked on many projects, including working on NASA’s University Student Launch Initiative and the preliminary design of the Artemis rocket, a reusable rocket with interchangeable configurations. However, my main interest was asteroid rendezvous missions, as this topic was the focus of my senior design and then my master’s project. These projects analyzed the use of an imaging LIDAR for asteroid gravity field estimations and eventual closed loop touchdown controllers. The work I did on the LIDAR simulation was one of the ten selected proposals for the Air Force Office of Scientific Research’s University NanoSat Program in 2012.