Spencer received B.S. and M.S. degrees in aeronautics and astronautics from Purdue University in W. Lafayette, Indiana. He earned his Ph.D. from the Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, completing a dissertation on automated proximity operations using relative orbital elements.
Spaceflight career
Spencer worked at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory from 1991 through 2008. He served on mission design and navigation team for the TOPEX/Poseidon mission, and he was the lead mission designer for Mars Pathfinder, responsible for the design of the interplanetary transfer and the entry, descent and landing trajectory. Spencer served as the mission manager for NASA’s Mars Odyssey from 1997-2002, and Deep Impact from 2004-2005, leading the mission design and operations for the projects. He was the deputy project manager for the Phoenix Mars Lander, with a focus on EDL and surface operations. Spencer left JPL in 2008 to join the Aerospace Engineering faculty at Georgia Tech. At Georgia Tech, Spencer founded the Center for Space Systems, and was the Co-Director of the SpaceSystems Design Laboratory, a multi-disciplinary research and educational organization dedicated to the design, development and operations of advanced space systems and technologies. He initiated a small satellite program at Georgia Tech, establishing facilities for satellite fabrication, testing, tracking and operations. He collaborated with students and faculty on the development of a series of small satellite missions. Spencer served as mission manager for The Planetary Society's LightSail 1 spacecraft, leading the mission design and system engineering of the solar sail demonstration project. LightSail 1 was launched on May 20, 2015. Spencer led the team through a successful solar sail deployment almost a month later, before LightSail 1 reentered Earth’s atmosphere. Spencer is the project manager for a second LightSail spacecraft, LightSail 2, launched in 2019. LightSail 2 was deployed into orbit by the Prox-1 spacecraft developed by Spencer and students at Georgia Tech. LightSail 2 successfully demonstrated controlled solar sailing in Earth orbit. Spencer transitioned from Georgia Tech in 2016 to join the faculty of the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Purdue University, where he conducted research on small satellite applications, proximity operations, and aeroassist technologies. He led the Purdue Engineering Initiative on cislunar space, with the goal of expanding the orbital economy to encompass the cislunar environment. Spencer became the Mission Manager for the Mars Sample Return Campaign in 2020, with the objective to return a geologically diverse set of Mars samples for Earth-based laboratory analysis. The Mars Sample Return Campaign is a joint effort between the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the European Space Agency.
