University at Buffalo (UB)
Crassidis Named AAS Fellow
Published July 8, 2014 This content is archived.
Photo by Nancy J. Parisi
John Crassidis was elected Fellow of the American Astronautical Society "for outstanding contributions in spacecraft attitude estimation and space situational awareness applications."
The number of AAS fellows elected per year is limited to within 1% of total membership and is typically around four to six members. Newly elected fellows were recognized at the AAS Goddard Symposium Honors and Awards Luncheon held in Greenbelt, MD on March 5, 2014.
Crassidis works with NASA, the Department of Defense and other agencies to monitor space debris, also known as space junk, which threatens satellites and future space missions.
There is no cost-effective way to remove space debris, so researchers like Crassidis are developing ways to better track the thousands of manmade objects that orbit Earth. His latest project is LANSAT, or Lightcurve Analyzing NanoSATellite, a U.S. Air Force-funded project that NASA plans to send into space in two years.
In addition to teaching and conducting research at UB, Crassidis serves as associate director of the Center for Multisource Information Fusion (CMIF), an organization operated by UB and CUBRC that works to streamline massive amounts of data into useful information for government agencies, business and other partners.
A three-time UB alumnus — PhD ’93, MS ’91& BS ’89 — Crassidis joined the UB faculty in 2001. He is CUBRC Professor in Space Situational Awareness in the department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.