Rob Falck

About Rob Falck

I have worked in the Mission Analysis Branch at NASA Glenn Research Center since My primary tasks generally involve the performance of mission and systems analysis for space missions, primarily those utilizing low-thrust propulsion. Generally this entails understanding the interplay of various spacecraft subsystems during the design process, and then adjusting them to find a design point which meets requirements and best satisfies some objective.Since 2006 I have been involved in the development and maintenance of of the \"Optimal Trajectories by Implicit Simulation\"(OTIS) software. OTIS was originally developed at Boeing and has been maintained and developed by NASA Glenn Research Center since the 1990\'s. The latest incarnation of the software, OTIS4, was awarded NASA \"Software of the Year\" award in 2008 and was recognized with R&D Magazine\'s \"R&D 100\" awards, for the 100 best technological innovations of 2009.My most recent work concentrates on applying multidisciplinary optimization techniques to optimal control via pseudospectral and shooting methods. I\'m the developer of Dymos, an open-source OpenMDAO-based library for optimal control. If you\'re interested you can check it out at https://github.com/OpenMDAO/dymosDymos is inspired by OTIS and features a similar approach to optimal control, but also features a slew of improvements, primarily in providing more accurate analytic derivatives and in enabling parallelization of the optimization via MPI.I\'ve worked on various projects while at NASA, including trajectory and systems analysis for the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter, trajectory simulation and optimization for the Orion Crew vehicle, and performance analyses for a variety of technology demonstration missions.Specialties: Trajectory optimization, simulation development, subsystem modeling, mission proposal review, spacecraft mission analysis (chemical and low-thrust propulsion), scientific programming with Fortran, Python, C++.

Experience

1. Openmdao Software Team Lead

   Nasa Glenn Research Center

   Feb 2020 — Present

Education

• Purdue University

  MS, Aerospace, Aeronautical and Astronautical/Space Engineering

  2008 — 2013

• Case Western Reserve University

  BS, Aerospace Engineering

  1997 — 2002

Skills

• Fortran
• Spacecraft
• Propulsion
• Matlab
• Simulations
• Space Systems
• Modeling
• Orbital Mechanics
• Python
• Flight Dynamics
• Aircraft Design
• Simulation
• Numerical Analysis
• Latex
• Physics
• Technical Writing
• C++
• Mathematics
• Aerospace
• Optimal Control
• Mission Analysis
• Trajectory Optimization
• Astrodynamics
• Guidance Navigation & Control
• Trajectory Analysis
• Flight Mechanics
• Dynamics
• Trade Studies
• Opencl