Westminster, CO – Advanced Space, LLC, a leading space tech solutions company, is pleased to announce the promotion of Thomas Gardner to Chief Engineer. Gardner, who has served as Director of Engineering for Advanced Space since 2016, will be responsible for the full scope of Advanced Space’s growing portfolio and our expanding engineering team. He also will be responsible for the department budget, meeting departmental metrics and goals, and making personnel decisions. His work will include reviewing and approving the work of the engineers who report to him along with attending design reviews, test plan reviews, design failure mode and effect analysis (DFMEA) meetings, and other critical design function meetings to make sure their people are following best practices and internal/industry standards. He will collaborate with the Project Managers to get the right people assigned to projects and get projects done and occasionally manage or supervise small projects that don’t require a Project Manager.
Prior to his time with Advanced Space, Mr. Gardner served in a variety of engineering leadership roles in the space industry. At Cornell Technical Services, he conducted technical evaluations of flight and mission design systems submitted in proposals for NASA Space Science, Earth Science, and Technical Development projects. At Moon Express, he led a team of engineers through the development of a lunar lander competing for the Google Lunar X Prize (GLXP); led the development and delivery of two winning proposals to NASA; and served as Flight Systems Lead/Deputy Project Manager for the successful 6-month flight test campaign at NASA Kennedy Space Center that directly led to the award of the GLXP Interim Prizes ($1.5M). At Raytheon (now RTX), he served as the NASA Programs Chief Engineer/Space Systems New Business Technical Lead, leading NASA, commercial, and DoD space projects and proposal efforts. And at Lockheed Martin, Mr. Gardner provided direct senior technical leadership and engineering analysis for 3 major program areas: Pre-Phase A and concept study proposal development for Mars, Discovery and MIDEX class space missions, Mission analysis, GN&C, and software development and design for the Athena launch vehicle, and System design, development and hardware implementation for the Stardust Discovery mission.
Advanced Space CEO and President Bradley Cheetham stated, “This move shows our confidence in Mr. Gardner, as the industry respects him, and it reflects our confidence in the growth of the company. Tom brings unmatched experience and leadership to our team. We have an exciting future ahead with lots of work to be done. I look forward to benefitting from his further insights and contributions going forward.”