Bobby Nejad Author

Bobby Nejad is a ground segment Systems Engineer at the European Space Agency (ESA) where he has been involved in the design, development, and qualification of the ground control segment of the European Global Navigation Satellite System “Galileo” for the past 14 years.

He received a master’s degree in technical physics from  the ‘’Technische Universität Graz”  and a second one in astronomy from the “Karl-Franzens Universität” in Graz, Austria. He conducted several academic research stays at the “Université Joseph Fourier“ in  Grenbole, the “Bureau des Longitudes” of the Paris Observatory, and the “Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering” of the University of Idaho. He started at ESA as a young graduate trainee in 2001 to work on the joined NASA and ESA Cassini-Huygens mission to explore Saturn and its moons in the outer planetary system. Being a member of the collocated team at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena USA, he earnt his PhD. on the reconstruction of the entry, descent and landing trajectory of the Huygens probe on Titan in 2005.

In the following year Bobby joined the operational flight dynamics team of the German Space Operations Centre, where he was responsible for the manoeuvre planning and commanding of the synthetic aperture radar satellites TerraSAR-X, TanDEM-X, and the SAR-Lupe constellation, the latter one being the first military reconnaissance satellite system of the German armed forces. Bobby joined the Galileo project at the European Space Technology and Research Centre of the ESA in 2008 and has since then contributed as a Technical Officer to the definition and development of the ground segment’s flight dynamics, mission planning, and TT&C ground station systems. Since 2012 he works at the Galileo Control Centre, where he is supervises the assembly, integration, and qualification of the Galileo ground control segment.