Flight Director, KinetX Aerospace, Inc.
B.S. ASE 1984, Purdue University
M.S. ASE 1987, The University of Texas at Austin
Ph.D. ASE 1992, University of Colorado Boulder
Peter Antreasian is the flight director of Space Navigation and Flight Dynamics (SNAFD) for KinetX Aerospace, the first privately held company to supply critical navigation support for NASA deep space missions. He oversees the KinetX navigation teams supporting both civil and commercial deep space flight projects. He has also served as the navigation team chief for the NASA OSIRIS-OREx mission which recently returned a sample of the near-Earth asteroid, Bennu, to Earth and continues this role for the extended OSIRIS-APEX mission to the asteroid Apophis in 2029.
Antreasian earned his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in aerospace engineering, respectively, from Purdue University, The University of Texas at Austin and the University of Colorado.
Antreasian began his career as an orbit determination (OD) analyst for the Galileo navigation team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1992. After the Galileo prime mission at Jupiter ended, he became the OD team manager for the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous mission to asteroid 433-Eros from 1997 to 2001. He then led the Mars Odyssey OD team in 2001. In 2002, Antreasian joined the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) navigation team as an OD analyst. Peter led the OD team on the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn from 2003 to 2008.
In 2008, Antreasian became the GRAIL navigation team chief. After the end of this mission, in 2013, he joined the SNAFD group at KinetX to become the Navigation Team Chief for NASA OSIRIS-REx mission.
To prepare for the Galileo and Cassini spacecraft encounters with Jupiter and Saturn, respectively, Antreasian was instrumental in the improvement of the OD operational processes and procedures at JPL. His efforts eliminated delivery errors within the large teams making frequent project deliveries. As the NEAR mission at 433-Eros was ending in 2001, Antreasian designed, and directed the end-of-mission operations with close flyovers of the asteroid, ending with the first-ever landing of a spacecraft on an asteroid. On MER, he developed an innovative OD filter-loop tool used by the navigation team throughout cruise to Mars which provided valuable insight to how different tracking data or filter parameters affected the solutions. His GRAIL navigation team succeeded in separately delivering two spacecraft via low-energy trajectories to the moon then synchronizing them into low lunar orbits to collect high-resolution-gravity measurements.
The small asteroid size relative to the navigation errors made OSIRIS-REx an even more challenging mission, as his navigation team had to achieve higher orders of navigation accuracy than required for other deep space missions. His CU PhD dissertation on “Precision Radiation Force Modeling for the TOPEX/Poseidon Mission” was seminal to the force modeling on the OSIRIS-REx trajectory.
Antreasian has served as a navigation advisor for several NASA, and international deep space missions. His honors include two NASA Medals, the Exceptional Achievement Medal for leading GRAIL Navigation Team and the NASA Exceptional Public Service medal for contributions to NASA’s Deep-Space-Navigation Enterprises. In 2016, the asteroid 128022 Peterantreasian was named in his honor. Peter has authored or co-authored over 120 publications in journals and conference proceedings
Antreasian lives in Littleton, Colorado, with his wife, Kathy, and their four children, Ryan, Julia, Bridget, and Dylan. Peter enjoys activities in the mountains, astrophotography, art and star gazing.
