George
Hatcher

George W. Hatcher is a NASA engineer at the Kennedy Space Center. As a guidance, navigation, and flight controls engineer he helped launch space shuttles from 2004 to 2011. George now consults on flight computers for launch vehicles such as Falcon 9, Pegasus, and Antares. He also lends expertise to next-generation commercial space activities and advanced technology demonstrations, like small-scale orbital-class launch vehicles, nanosats, and drill-mounted fiber optic sensors for asteroid prospecting. George has bachelor's and master's degrees in aerospace engineering from the University of Tennessee. For five years, he split time between NASA and the University of Central Florida pursuing a PhD in planetary science and conducting experiments in planetary formation, before being called back to avionics engineering full time. While working on his PhD, George spent seven months at KSC's Swamp Works helping to develop a simulated asteroid regolith from a mixture of processed minerals available on Earth.