ABSL Space Team
Meet some of our newest team members…
David Smart (Project Manager)
David joined ABSL from Rutherford Appleton Laboratory where he gained over ten years experience working as a project engineer and project manager on spacecraft borne instrumentation for missions such as Meteosat Second Generation (MSG), LISA Pathfinder and the Solar Dynamics Observatory. He has been involved in the full life cycle of instrument development, through from the bid phase to final delivery with particular areas of interest including structural, optical and mechanism engineering. These skills have been supplemented over time by team leadership along with project, strategic, risk and change management experience.
Andy McNamara (Project Manager)
Andrew McNamara has a strong industrial and academic background straddling engineering and manufacturing management in the Aerospace and Space sectors. Andrew joined ABSL in 2006 to provide technical management of Space battery programs, including NASA’s flagship LRO/LCROSS Moon mission. He has since moved into full-time project management, including ABSL’s contribution the SWARM constellation for ESA. Andrew now adds his technical and management experience to the Space Instruments Team.
Monika Lofthouse (Mechanical Engineer)
Monika joined ABSL last year to strengthen our technical analysis team. For 6 years, Monika was a Development Engineer for KISTLER in Germany, working on in-house product development projects and acting as a consultant for R&D teams in German engineering industry. She is very experienced in Finite Element Analysis (specifically structural, thermal and modal analysis). Monika has an M.Sc. from University of Tübingen in Germany.
Chris Banks (Technical Engineer)
Chris is a recent graduate engineer, working in the ABSL technical team. He gained an MEng in Electrical and Mechanical Engineering from Edinburgh University. He is currently working on both project work and on trending and profiling cell level and batch performance of cells looking for long-term performance trends.
Burzin Rustumji (Technical Engineer)
Burzin is another of our recent graduates. Burzin holds an MEng(Hons) degree in Materials Science and Engineering from Imperial College London. Burzin is currently involved in analysing test results for some of our larger battery contracts, but he is also gearing up to lead some geo-life testing activities, enhancing our existing long-term performance database of space cells and batteries for all orbital mission types.