Mike Menzel

Mike Menzel is the NASA Mission Systems Engineer for the JWST at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Menzel has held this position since he joined NASA in June of 2004. His involvement with the James Webb Project extends back to 1998 when he became the Chief Systems Engineer for Lockheed Martin’s Pre-Phase A studies for the then Next Generation Space Telescope and later for Lockheed’s Phase A JWST contract. In 2001, he joined the Northrop Grumman JWST systems engineering team.

In his role on JWST, Menzel oversees all system engineering efforts which include requirements formulation and management, systems design and integration, and systems validation and verification. He has led numerous studies which have contributed to the systems design and verification program. He wrote one of the first articles to layout a verification program for the system, “A Strawman Verification Program for the Next Generation Space Telescope” in 1998 and led the Independent Verification Assessment Team, to evaluate the verification risks in 2003.

Prior to his involvement with James Webb, Menzel was the Deputy Program Manager for the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Servicing Missions Group for Lockheed Martin. While in this position, he participated in system engineering activities for the HST Orbital System Test (HOST), which flew on STS 95. Between 1995 and 1997, he was the Director of Systems Engineering at Orbital Science Corporation (OSC) in Germantown, Maryland. Aside from the functional management duties of this position he led several proposal efforts; among them, the successful GALEX Mission proposal for the OSC spacecraft. Between 1990 and 1995, Menel was a Principal Member of the Technical Staff for Lockheed Martin’s Astro-Space Division in East Windsor, New Jersey and Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. While in this position, he contributed to numerous system conceptual design studies, was the functional manager of the Sensor Systems Group and developed and taught the Systems Engineering Training course for the Astro-Space Division. He was awarded the Martin Marietta General Manager’s Award in 1993 for these efforts. Between 1981 and 1990, Menzel was an antenna engineer for RCA Astro in East Windsor New Jersey.

Menzel received a BS degree in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technnology in 1981 and earned an MS degree in Physics from Columbia University in 1986 while he was working for RCA.

During his career, Menzel has held various positions as an adjunct college instructor for Astronomy and Physics. He is an avid amateur astronomer and is a member of the American Astronomical Society. Menzel also enjoys weightlifting and has competed in several amateur power lifting events over the years.