NIA | Langley Professors

North Carolina State University Langley Professor

Robert H. Tolson, Ph.D.
Director, the Center for Planetary Atmospheric Flight Sciences

Research Interests and Specialty Areas:

Astronautics

Aeronautics

"We work on real-world missions. I know of no other place where students
can be involved with critical mission elements. Their analyses and
recommendations have a direct result on the decisions managers make every day."

"Figure out how to get to the Moon and back": not bad for the first assignment as a fresh out aerospace engineer. That was nine months after Sputnik I and two years before President Kennedy officially established the goal and Dr. Robert Tolson's first day at the NASA Langley Research Center. That first assignment essentially established the direction for his whole career.

During Dr. Tolson’s early career, he performed guidance, navigation and trajectory analyses for the Lunar Orbiter, Apollo and Viking missions. He was either a principal investigator or a co-investigator on several space missions, including the Lunar Orbiter Selenodesy Experiment that mapped the gravity field of the Moon for scientific and Apollo navigation reasons; the Viking Radio Science Team that determined atmospheric, gravitational and areophysical properties of Mars; the Pioneer Venus Aeronomy experiment that explored the upper atmosphere of Venus; and the GEOS-3 radar-altimetry mission that investigated the terrestrial oceans.

Dr. Tolson was also the originator of the Viking Phobos-Deimos Encounter Experiment, during which the Viking Orbiters passed within 30 kilometers of Phobos and 100 kilometers of Deimos, determining the mass of both satellites and providing images with resolutions of less than one meter. Closer to home, he has extensive experience analyzing and interpreting Earth observation data, including the Nimbus-6 measurements of stratospheric ozone.

As his NASA career matured, Dr. Tolson acted as head of two research branches and a division-level office focused on interdisciplinary research for aerospace vehicles including rotorcraft, hypersonic vehicles, and large, flexible space structures. He also served as the Chief Scientist of the Langley Research Center. Dr. Tolson is a recipient of the Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement, NASA's highest scientific award.

Synergistic Research

Today, with more than 40 years’ of research, management, and educational experience in aerospace science, engineering and technology, Dr. Tolson continues a robust research program.

Current and recent student studies include recovering upper atmosphere winds on Mars from the Odyssey aerobraking data; analysis of the aerobraking phase of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission; entry aerothermodynamics and flight mechanics studies for both the Mars Science Laboratory and the Phoenix mission; CEV aerocapture returning from the Moon or Mars; Titan-Huygens entry reconstruction and atmospheric characterization; and Mars Exploration Rover (MER) entry anomaly investigation.

To improve performance for future robotic and manned missions, Dr. Tolson has initiated synergistic research between atmospheric scientists, who develop and improve planetary atmospheric models, and planetary-entry researchers, who rely on atmospheric models to design entry flight systems and trajectories.

Real-Time Operations

Dr. Tolson’s activities are integrated with the research efforts of NASA’s planetary entry, atmospheric science, and sensor development groups, as well as faculty and students from NIA universities. Long-term foci include developing physics-based uncertainty and risk-analysis simulations of NASA’s exploration and science missions that utilize atmospheric entry or other aeroassist approaches.

He and his students were involved in real time operations during the aerobraking phase of the Mars Global Surveyor, the Mars Odyssey and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter missions. During these missions, real time analysis and interpretation was performed using accelerometer and other telemetry data to determine aerodynamic/atmospheric properties at aerobraking altitudes. Results of these studies were used by the project to make daily orbit-maneuver decisions.

Dr. Tolson has over 50 refereed publications.

"I try to keep my students directly involved in flight missions rather than
paper studies. I have students looking at moon landings, crew-exploration
vehicle return from the Moon, the radiation environment for the space station,
and every Mars mission currently beig planned. It's a pretty good way to
start a career."

Contact Information: E-mail | (757) 325-6840 | Website