Colloquium Series

President, Final Frontier Design

Ted Southern is the President and co-founder of Final Frontier Design (FFD), a space suit design and manufacturing company based in Brooklyn, New York. Ted manages teams of up to 12 from project proposal to completion and delivery, with both NASA and the commercial space industry. FFD was formed from a successful partnership in NASA's 2009 Astronaut Glove Competition, together with his co-founder, Nikolay Moiseev. Mr. Southern has served as Principal Investigator for 6 NASA SBIR contracts for FFD, between 2011-2020 for space suit component development, including pressurized gloves, arm mobility joints, and radiation protection for space suits. He has published his reports on pressurized gloves in peer reviewed journals including the Journal of Aviation, Space, and Environmental Medicine (ASEM) and the International Conference on Environmental Systems (ICES). Mr. Southern was the PI for a fixed-price contract to develop next-generation Mechanical Counter Pressure Gloves for NASA, and for a NASA sponsored microgravity flight campaign (via the Flight Opportunities Program) in 2017. In addition, Ted has overseen a 6-year Space Act Agreement (SAA) with NASA to human rate FFD's IVA space suit. Ted is currently managing development of a complete internal EVA space suit system and multiple fixed-price contracts with NASA for their Lunar xEMU EVA space suit.

Chief Scientist for Small Body Exploration, Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science Division, NASA Johnson Space Center

Paul Abell is the Chief Scientist for Small Body Exploration in the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science Division at the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. His main areas of interest are physical characterization of near-Earth objects (NEOs) via ground-based and spacecraft observations, examination of NEOs for future robotic and human exploration, mitigation of potentially hazardous asteroids and comets, and identification of potential resources within the NEO population for future in situ utilization.

He was a science team member on the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) Hayabusa near-Earth asteroid sample-return mission and participated in the successful recovery of the spacecraft's sample return capsule, which returned to Woomera, Australia in June 2010. Paul is currently a team member of the Hayabusa2 mission and is aiding the cooperation between Hayabusa2 and NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft teams as they investigate and sample their respective near-Earth asteroids.

Since 2006 Paul has been a member of an internal NASA team that has been examining the possibility of sending astronauts to NEOs for human missions. He is also an investigation team member on both NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) and Near-Earth Object Surveyor Mission (NEOSM) planetary defense missions, and a team member on ESA's Hera planetary defense mission. Asteroid 8139 (1980 UM1) is named Paulabell in recognition of Paul's contributions to NEO research and exploration studies.

Paul is a 1993 Space Studies M.S. graduate.

Former Life Support Systems Engineer, Air Force, and Former Spacesuit Engineer, United Space Alliance

Dr. Carfagno was a Life Support Systems engineer with the Air Force, in charge of getting pressure suits and survival equipment ready for the high altitude pilots. Then he became a space suit engineer, working for United Space Alliance supporting the Space Shuttle program. Dr. Carfagno would end up preparing astronauts for 11 different Space Shuttle missions. Along with candidates in training, he estimates he suited up roughly 100 astronauts from all around the world during his 15 years in his position. He won the Silver Snoopy Award from NASA, bestowed to less than one percent of the aerospace community, for his work on STS-112, an 11-day mission to the International Space Station by the shuttle Atlantis in October 2002.

Guidance & Control Section Chief Engineer, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Mr. Miguel San Martin participated in the Magellan mission to Venus and the Cassini mission to Saturn. He was later named Chief Engineer for the Guidance, Navigation, and Control system for the Pathfinder mission. He assumed the same role for the mission that landed the robotic vehicles Spirit and Opportunity on Mars in 2004. Most recently, he was the Chief Engineer for Guidance, Navigation, and Control for the Mars Science Laboratory, which landed Curiosity on the surface of Mars in 2012. He was a co-architect of Curiosity's innovative SkyCrane landing architecture and also served as its Deputy Chief for Entry, Descent, and Landing. Throughout his career, San Martin has served as a panel consultant for various missions including Topex, Mars Polar Lander, Deep Impact, and Phoenix. Mr. San Martin has a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Syracuse University and an M.S. from MIT in Aeronautics and Astronautics Engineering with a specialization in Guidance, Navigation, and Control for interplanetary space exploration.

For his contributions, Mr. San Martin was awarded two NASA Exceptional Achievement in Engineering Medals, named JPL Fellow in 2013, and elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2019.

Assistant Professor of Aerospace Studies, Space Force. AFROTC Det. 610

Major Franciere has almost 25 years in the U.S. Air Force Space Operations career field at various military space operations locations, including Alaska, Australia, California, and most recently Colorado. He's been certified in multiple space systems, including Global Positioning System, Defense Support Program, Space-Based Infrared Systems, Space-Based Space Surveillance, Ground-Based Missile Warning and Surveillance Radars, and more recently at the National Reconnaissance Office and also the National Space Defense Center. He recently transferred into the U.S. Space Force in September of this past year.