Presented to: Cheryl J. Gramling
Citation: For numerous outstanding contributions to the science of spacecraft navigation, ensuring the safety of life of crewed and robotic space missions, past and future
Cheryl J. Gramling leads NASA’s lunar/cislunar PNT standards, architecture, systems and technical definitions to ensure resilient PNT for lunar crewed and robotic missions. She is instrumental in developing national policy for lunar communications and PNT systems. Additionally, she leads the international working group for interoperable PNT services, lunar service provider interoperability specification development among international organizations, and influences LunaNet governance; this includes coordination with stakeholders for lunar celestial reference system and time standards accepted by the International Astronomical Union.
From 2010-2021 Ms. Gramling led navigation initiatives for NASA’s Robotic and Artemis Missions developing comprehensive autonomous flight dynamics applied to the LunaNet relay architecture systems, focused on core Flight System apps for GNC implementing data fusion from opportunistic sources, and the PNT broadcast service to lunar orbiters and surface elements. Following her role as the MMS GNC and Commissioning lead, she championed an agent-paradigm and standards approach for distributed system missions enabling cross-disciplinary science; she developed a technology demonstration mission proposal for a LunaNavSat that met the needs of surface assets in extreme environments; and she performed multi-data analysis generating navigation options for objects in the NRHO, visiting vehicles that deploy to/from, or operate on, the surface.
From 1987-1994 Ms. Gramling guided the conception, development, and operational use of onboard autonomous navigation as the principal investigator to measure/process Doppler from forward communications link onboard the EUVE mission.
Since 1993 she led the Terra TONS product development, directing a team to develop an autonomous navigation system composed of flight hardware, embedded flight software, and ground support system from requirements through flight commissioning to process 1-way Doppler from TDRSS, consistently achieving <30m RSS.
Ms. Gramling is the lunar PNT and standards lead in NASA’s Space Communications and Navigation and a Goddard Senior Fellow. She received her BS in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Maryland.