Abhi Tripathi has been working in Human and Robotic Space flight for over 20 years. He is presently the Director of Mission Operations at the UC Berkeley Space Sciences Lab (SSL). The lab currently operates 3 NASA missions and has 4 more it is actively building and testing in preparation for launch. This includes the twin spacecraft ESCAPADE mission to Mars. Abhi is also an advisor to several exciting aerospace startups, both through his involvement at the Berkeley Skydeck Accelerator, and on his own.
Prior to his role at SSL, Abhi spent 10 years working at SpaceX, starting a month before the first launch of the F9. He led certification (by NASA) of the Cargo and Crew Dragon programs at SpaceX. These vehicles were certified faster than any visiting vehicles, before or since. He served as the Dragon Mission Director from mission control on a dozen cargo re-supply missions to the International Space Station. He also served as a Dragon Chief Engineer for Flight Reliability on the Crew Demo 1 and Demo 2 missions. Before SpaceX, Abhi spent 10 years as an Aerospace Systems engineer at NASA Johnson Space Center. There he worked on NASA’s long term planning and design work for Moon and Mars campaigns.
Abhi has degrees in aerospace engineering from the University of Michigan and University of Colorado. He holds a Ph.D. in Geology/Micropaleontology from UCLA.