A New Space Race: Our Current Space Exploration

Dr. Kalirai is also the Program Chair for the Johns Hopkins Whiting School Engineering for Professionals Applied Physics Program.

Prior to his current role, Dr. Kalirai served as mission area executive for Civil Space, where he led the implementation of innovative and cost-effective solutions to critical civil space challenges by developing space science missions, instruments, and research programs – including missions such as New Horizons, Parker Solar Probe, Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), Europa Clipper, Lunar Vertex, Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP), Electrojet Zeeman Imaging Explorer (EZIE) and Dragonfly.

Before joining APL in 2018, Dr. Kalirai served as the multi-mission project scientist at NASA’s Space Telescope Science Institute. He led strategic initiatives to realize operational, technological, and scientific synergies for the Hubble Space Telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope, and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. He played a leading role in championing the science of these missions. He previously served as the institute’s project scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope.

In addition to his APL responsibilities, Dr. Kalirai participates in and leads scientific research programs aimed at understanding stellar life cycles. His research group has published more than 100 research papers, and he has given hundreds of invited presentations.

Honors he has received include the American Astronomical Society’s Newton Lacy Pierce Prize, the Maryland Academy of Sciences Outstanding Young Scientist award, and Baltimore Magazine’s “40 under 40” award. Finally, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship as a Hubble Fellow at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Dr. Kalirai earned a B.S. (with honors) in physics and astronomy, an M.S. in astrophysics, and a Ph.D. in astrophysics, all from the University of British Columbia.

Milena Bobea Graziano is a Chief Engineer in the Space Environmental Effects Group within the Space Exploration Sector at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Physics from the University of Puerto Rico, and a masters and Ph.D in Materials Science and Engineering from North Carolina State University. Her work focuses on materials and processes selection, qualification, and testing for spaceflight programs, and has worked on several instruments and subsystems for Psyche, Europa Clipper, and the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe. She is also a Systems Engineer for a gamma ray and neutron sensor instrument going on the JAXA Martian Moons Exploration spacecraft.

As a part of the Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium (LSIC), Milena is co-lead of the Crosscutting Capabilities Focus Area group, and has led the development of Lunar Engineering 101, a lunar resource for scientists and engineers that can aid the design and test of lunar surface systems.

Dr. Nancy L. Chabot is a planetary scientist whose scientific research focuses on understanding the formation and evolution of rocky planetary bodies in our solar system. She was the coordination lead on NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission, is the deputy principal investigator for the Mars-moon Exploration with Gamma Rays and Neutrons (MEGANE) instrument on the JAXA Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission and is an interdisciplinary scientist on the joint ESA-JAXA BepiColombo mission. On NASA’s MESSENGER mission, she was the instrument scientist for the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS) and the chair of the Geology Discipline Group. She has been a member of five field teams with the Antarctic Search for Meteorites (ANSMET) program. 

Dr. Laura C. Mayorga is an astronomer whose research focuses on understanding the atmospheres and surfaces of extrasolar planets. She works with several planetary mission instruments to study solar system objects as exoplanet analogs. Her pioneering efforts using Cassini observations of the Jupiter system inform direct imaging mission requirements for the detection and characterization of exoplanets.

Dr. Mayorga also sits on the executive committee of the “Characterizing Exoplanets” sub working group of the “Solar Systems in Context” Habitable Worlds Observatory working group. There, she applies her expertise in atmospheric simulations of giant planets and measuring the orbital phase curves of transiting exoplanets with TESS, Kepler, HST, and JWST, to ensure that HWO is designed to return the best exoplanet science.