Dan J. Mabry is a senior engineering specialist in the Experiments Laboratory (xLab) at The Aerospace Corporation. In this role, he serves as system architect, systems engineer, electrical systems lead, and hardware and software developer for space-based, airborne, and ground-based research systems in support of the U.S. Air Force, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), commercial, and internal programs. He works on programs in all phases of development, including conceptualization, requirements definition, design and implementation, test and calibration, deployment, and end-of-life processing. Aside from his design duties, he has been an active contributor to radiation test programs to qualify low-cost commercial parts for use in CubeSat and similar programs by characterizing their response to energetic particles seen in space environments; in total, he has produced test reports for more than 30 interface, processor, power conversion, memory, and field programmable gate array (FPGA) devices. Mabry has been with Aerospace for more than 41 years.
Prior to his current role, Mabry spent 16 years as the department director for the Space Instrumentation Department (SID), where he managed a staff of up to 50 full-time design, fabrication, and test engineers, working to realize research programs targeted at space, airborne, and ground-based missions. He co-developed the first application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) in Aerospace laboratories for satellite-based scientific research, and this led to licensing for a commercial radiation dosimeter hybrid. Mabry also co-developed the data processing unit for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA’s) SAMPEX mission, which launched in 1992 and included the first FPGA flown on any NASA mission.
During and prior to his management roles, Mabry was an active design and test contributor to more than 70 deliverable programs performing duties of proposal development, and all phases of design, test, and calibration. He has supported programs for the NRO, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Navy, NASA, the Missile Defense Agency (MDA), and several commercial programs. He has developed multiple life test systems to characterize failure rates for complex integrated circuits on behalf of Air Force programs.
Mabry co-holds two patents for miniature space weather detector systems.
Education
Mabry holds a bachelor's degree in math and computer science from UCLA, a master's degree in electrical engineering from USC, and a certificate in systems engineering from UC Irvine.
