National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Mr. Sami Asmar is the Manager of Strategic Partnerships and Customer Formulation in the Interplanetary Network Directorate at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), California Institute of Technology, and has extensive experience with NASA’s international and commercial partners. During his distinguished career as a Radio Scientist, he was the manager of JPL’s Radio Science Systems Group, Project Scientist for the GRAIL lunar gravity mission, and a co-investigator or instrument manager on several US and European deep space missions – – currently the Radio Science Co-PI for the BepiColombo mission.

He has a BS in physics from Occidental College and MS in Geophysics and Space Physics from UCLA. He is the recipient of 3 NASA Exceptional Achievement Medals for technological and scientific breakthroughs and a SpaceOps Exceptional Achievement Medal for innovative deep space communications techniques.

He has been leading JPL research initiatives in radio and laser link utilization for planetary exploration and invented the “carry your own relay” concept and the Mars Cube One (MarCO), the first solar system CubeSat mission (NASA Inventions Board NPO-49544), and was its formulation Principal Investigator.