PULLMAN, Wash. The Orion multipurpose crew vehicle (MPCV), which aims to carry astronauts on deep-space exploration missions starting within the next decade, will be discussed at a free, public lecture at 11 a.m. Thursday, Oct. 18, in the Engineering, Teaching and Research Laboratory (ETRL) 101 at Washington State University Pullman.
Speaker Iris Bombelyn is vice president and program manager for the mobile user objective system at Lockheed Martin Space Systems Co., which is the lead contractor for NASA on the MPCV. She is a WSU alumna.
Orion aims to facilitate human exploration of the solar system, carrying astronauts to distant destinations such as asteroids, the far side of the moon and Mars. Named for the constellation and the original Orion space capsule, which was part of the Apollo 16 mission to the moon in 1972, the new Orion will include advanced propulsion, communication, power, navigation and safety systems. The first unmanned testing of the vehicle is set to begin in 2014.
Bombelyn leads a Lockheed Martin team responsible for the design, build and delivery of five satellites and four ground stations to provide secure communications for mobile users around the world. Most recently, she led the space systems company manufacturing team, providing complex manufacturing of unique items for space and sub-orbital applications, promoting lean and defect-free manufacturing and supporting advanced manufacturing for new product offerings.
She has an extensive background in launch vehicles. She began her career on the Titan launch team at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., and also supported Atlas operations. She spent nine years supporting Proton commercial launch services and was launch operations manager and program director. She was program director at Orbital Sciences Corporation, where she led a team that designed and delivered a commercial communications satellite.
Bombelyn holds a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Washington State University and a master’s in business administration from MIT’s Sloan Fellows Program in Leadership and Global Innovation. She received the Silicon Valley YWCA Tribute to Women in Industry award in 2010 and was named 2012 Asian American Executive of the Year by the Chinese Institute of Engineers-USA.
Her presentation is sponsored by WSU’s College of Engineering and Architecture as part of the Lanning Lecture series, which was established in 1988 and is funded by civil engineering alumnus Jack Dillon, ’41, to honor his late wife, Frances Lanning Dillon. The series aims to augment students’ knowledge of the profession beyond the academic dimension.