Jim Cantrell
| Jim Cantrell | |
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| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Utah State University |
| Website | jimcantrell |
Jim Cantrell is an American entrepreneur, mechanical engineer and road racer. He is CEO and co-founder of Vector Space Systems. After working at the French Space Agency CNES (Centre Nationale D’Etudes Spatiales) and the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab, he worked as an independent consultant to aerospace companies for fifteen years and was on the founding teams of SpaceX and Moon Express.
Cantrell received NASA Innovation Award for Mars Balloon Technology in 1989. He is the author of twenty technical papers.
A mechanical engineer by profession, Cantrell also occasionally participates in road racing and has participated in Thunderhill Raceway Park's 25 Hours of Thunderhill and the 24 Hours of Daytona Classic. In 2005, he founded Vintage Exotics Competition Engineering, which designs and restores race cars.
Cantrell was born and raised in Yucaipa, California and went to high school in San Jose, California. In 1983 he enrolled at Utah State University for a BS in Electrical Engineering but later changed to Mechanical Engineering. Alongside his BS, he worked as a research engineer at Jet Propulsion Laboratory for one year starting in 1987. At Jet Propulsion Laboratory, he worked on Mars exploration technologies including Mars Rover and Mars Balloon missions. He completed his BS in 1988 and started MS Mechanical Engineering at Utah State University, while working as a research engineer at the University’s Space Dynamics Laboratory again focusing on Mars exploration.
Cantrell joined the French Space Agency (CNES) in 1990 after completing his MS. He went to France to work on a joint French-Soviet Mars program and led the design and development of the Mars Snake for the Mars 94/96 balloon mission. He returned to the U.S. in 1992 to join Space Dynamics Laboratory, where he led the spacecraft systems engineering on three small satellites for Department of Defense. He also worked on various joint missile defense programs conducted between America and Russia. Cantrell was promoted to the position of director program development in 1997.
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