Anthony Freeman

Tony Freeman, PhD, is the manager of the Innovation Foundry at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). The Innovation Foundry is JPL's incubator for ideas, and helps between 100 and 150 formulation teams mature their innovative thoughts into mission concepts every year. These ideas span all of JPL's future space missions for NASA in Planetary Science, Astrophysics, Earth Science and Human Space Flight, and some work outside the NASA envelope. Recent highlights include the Psyche mission to explore a mysterious metal asteroid, a helicopter that will explore the surface of Mars, the MarCO interplanetary cubesats that served as relay for the Insight landing, an HF radio interferometer to study solar Coronal Mass ejections, and the Surface Biology and Geology mission architecture studies for Earth Science. He serves as a champion for cubesat and Smallsat projects at JPL, which has led to over 25 flight missions, leading towards a future where interplanetary cubesats are common. In a previous position, he was for several years the program manager of the Earth System Science Formulation office, leading the formulation of new ideas for Earth Science missions, which resulted in several major new flight projects at JPL.

His technical skills include (space) mission architecture and systems engineering. His technical interests include the architecture of innovative space missions, especially novel radar observing systems and techniques. He conceived of the 'Freeman method' for calibration of polarimetric imaging radars, the SweepSAR scan-on-receive technique for wide-swath radar imaging, which underpins NASA/JPL's NISAR mission, and is lead author of the 'Freeman-Durden Decomposition' for understanding the data produced by such systems.

His awards include the NASA Exceptional Service Medal for calibration of the SIR-C radar, which flew on the Space Shuttle Endeavour, the NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal for his work on Earth Science Mission Formulation, several NASA Group Achievement Awards and numerous NASA new technology awards. He holds two patents. In a technical career spanning over 35 years, he has authored over 200 original research contributions and is still active in publishing his ideas. He was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers in 2000 for his work on calibration of Synthetic Aperture Radar systems.

Dr. Freeman is a native of Manchester, England. He has a B.Sc. (Hons.) degree in mathematics and a Ph.D. in astrophysics, both from the University of Manchester.

Tony Freeman, PhD, is the manager of the Innovation Foundry at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). The Innovation Foundry is JPL's incubator for ideas, and helps between 100 and 150 formulation teams mature their innovative thoughts into mission concepts every year. These ideas span all of JPL's future space missions for NASA in Planetary Science, Astrophysics, Earth Science and Human Space Flight, and some work outside the NASA envelope. Recent highlights include the Psyche mission to explore a mysterious metal asteroid, a helicopter that will explore the surface of Mars, the MarCO interplanetary cubesats that served as relay for the Insight landing, an HF radio interferometer to study solar Coronal Mass ejections, and the Surface Biology and Geology mission architecture studies for Earth Science. He serves as a champion for cubesat and Smallsat projects at JPL, which has led to over 25 flight missions, leading towards a future where interplanetary cubesats are common. In a previous position he was for several years the program manager of the Earth System Science Formulation office, leading the formulation of new ideas for Earth Science missions, which resulted in several major new flight projects at JPL.

His technical skills include (space) mission architecture and systems engineering. His technical interests include the architecture of innovative space missions, especially novel radar observing systems and techniques. He conceived of the 'Freeman method' for calibration of polarimetric imaging radars, the SweepSAR scan-on-receive technique for wide-swath radar imaging, which underpins NASA/JPL's NISAR mission, and is lead author of the 'Freeman-Durden Decomposition' for understanding the data produced by such systems.

His awards include the NASA Exceptional Service Medal for calibration of the SIR-C radar, which flew on the Space Shuttle Endeavour, the NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal for his work on Earth Science Mission Formulation, several NASA Group Achievement Awards and numerous NASA new technology awards. He holds two patents. In a technical career spanning over 35 years, he has authored over 200 original research contributions and is still active in publishing his ideas. He was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers in 2000 for his work on calibration of Synthetic Aperture Radar systems.

Dr. Freeman is a native of Manchester, England. He has a B.Sc. (Hons.) degree in mathematics and a Ph.D. in astrophysics, both from the University of Manchester.