Chris Karlgaard
Papers
3
Total Citations
19
H-Index
3
About
Chris Karlgaard is a leading aerospace engineer whose work is central to NASA’s vision for autonomous planetary exploration. His research focuses on precision landing, hazard avoidance, and supersonic flight dynamics—critical technologies for future human missions to the Moon and Mars. As a key contributor to the Safe and Precise Landing Integrated Capabilities Evolution (SPLICE) project, Karlgaard has helped define the navigation requirements and simulation frameworks necessary to achieve landing accuracies far beyond current capabilities. His 2019 paper on defining navigation requirements for future precision landers (9 citations) and his 2020 work on simulation frameworks for hazard avoidance (7 citations) are foundational references in the field. Karlgaard also played a vital role in NASA’s Low Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) project, where he led the post-flight reconstruction of the first supersonic flight dynamics test in 2014—a mission that reached speeds over Mach 4 and altitudes above 200,000 feet. His contributions are helping turn the ambitious goal of a sustained human presence on the Moon into an engineering reality.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1Defining Navigation Requirements for Future Precision Lander Missions9 citations · 2019
- 2
- 3LDSD supersonic Flight Dynamics Test 1: Post-flight reconstruction3 citations · 2015