Dr. Abhishek Tripathi earned a B.S.E. in Aerospace Engineering from the
University of Michigan in 1998 and both an M.S. in Aerospace Engineering and a Certificate in Remote Sensing from the
University of Colorado in 2000. After graduating from Colorado he went to work at
NASA’s Johnson Space Center in the Advanced Projects Office. There he served as a lead systems engineer on several exploration studies, including those investigating the placement of an inflatable habitat at the Earth–Moon L1 (libration point), Mars Sample Return, and several efforts to detail a preliminary design for a successor to the Space Shuttle. In 2003 he took a leave of absence from NASA to pursue a doctorate at UCLA in Geology/Astrobiology. As a fellow at the Center for the Study of Evolution and the Origin of Life, he examined some of the most ancient fossils ever found, including those ~3.5 billion years old. For his dissertation he established a new technique for imaging microfossils three-dimensionally within their rock matrix using confocal laser scanning imagery and Raman spectroscopy. He is co-author of a chapter in the book
Taphonomy: Process and Bias Through Time
, which describes the use of the technique in micropaleontology.
After graduating with his doctorate in 2007, Dr. Tripathi returned to NASA’s Johnson Space Center to work on the
Constellation Program, an attempt to take the U.S. back to the Moon to stay. There he again served as a systems engineer helping to integrate the various vehicles in the Constellation architecture. In 2010 he served as the on-orbit phase lead for the program. In addition to his work in the Constellation program he served as the co-chair of the JPL-led
Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group’s (MEPAG) human exploration subcommittee, and is also one of the primary editors of NASA’s Design Reference Architecture for the human exploration of Mars. Upon cancellation of the Constellation program later in 2010, he moved on to the private sector and currently has a leadership role in working to develop and test commercial capabilities as part of
NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services contract.
In his spare time Dr. Tripathi is an avid outdoorsman and adventure-seeker. He has climbed Mt. Fuji, Whitney, and Kilimanjaro and has his sights set on a few more of the world’s tallest peaks. He is also a private pilot and scuba certified. In 2002 he completed high altitude chamber training and flew 30 microgravity parabolas in a KC-135 as a mentor for high school students that built a ferrofluid experiment he proposed. Dr. Tripathi is also a South Asian American cultural and political commenter who has been either interviewed by or quoted in the New York Times, BBC radio, and the Washington Post among others.
