Alumnus Lars Blackmore, Senior Principal Mars Landing Engineer at SpaceX, has received an award in recognition of his outstanding contributions to control systems technology.
The IEEE Control Systems Technology Award is presented to Lars Blackmore and Yoshiaki Kuwata for developing the guidance, navigation and control for the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy reusable rockets.
Award citation
The IEEE Control Systems Society presented its Control Systems Technology Award to Lars and fellow SpaceX employee Yoshiaki Kuwata, “for developing the guidance, navigation and control for the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy reusable rockets”.
From 2011 to 2018, Lars was responsible for the entry, descent and landing of Falcon 9 – the first orbital class rocket capable of reflight. In 2015, Falcon 9 completed the world’s first landing and recovery of an orbital-class booster stage. It delivered 11 satellites to low-Earth orbit and landed the first stage of the rocket back on Earth. In 2021, SpaceX successfully landed its 100th Falcon 9 booster.
Lars, who graduated from Cambridge in 2003 with a Master of Engineering (MEng) in Electrical and Information Sciences, is now responsible for the entry, descent and landing of Starship – SpaceX’s next-generation, fully reusable rocket with room for up to 100 passengers. The plan is to send large numbers of humans to the Moon and Mars.
Further reading
Alumni stories: Meet the principal rocket landing engineer at SpaceX
