Rate My Professor Henry Pernicka

Dr. Henry Pernicka is the Curators’ Distinguished Teaching Professor of Aerospace Engineering in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Missouri University of Science and Technology. He earned his B.S. in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering in 1984, M.S. in 1986, and Ph.D. in 1990, all from Purdue University. His doctoral research focused on the numerical determination of nominal libration point trajectories and the development of a station-keeping strategy, supporting missions such as SOHO, Wind, and ACE. Before joining Missouri S&T in 2001 as an associate professor, advancing to professor and Dean’s Educator Scholar in 2017, Pernicka served as assistant professor from 1990 to 1994 and associate professor from 1994 to 2001 at San José State University. His professional experience includes internships at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, and The Boeing Company.

Pernicka’s research specializations encompass astrodynamics, libration point orbits, orbital mechanics, spacecraft design and mission design, small satellites, CubeSats, satellite attitude dynamics, nonlinear analysis, dynamics and control, and optimization. As director of the Space Systems Engineering Laboratory, he advises the Missouri S&T Satellite research team (M-SAT), which has achieved first place in the Nanosat-8 competition, and the Formula SAE team since 2002. He has graduated 8 Ph.D. students and 34 master’s students, with many securing positions at NASA, the U.S. Department of Defense, and industry. Awards include the Curators’ Distinguished Teaching Professorship (2021), multiple Missouri S&T Outstanding Teaching Awards (2003–2020), ASEE Midwest Section Outstanding Teaching Awards (2006, 2007), and student paper awards at Small Satellite Conferences, such as first place for “Design, Test, and Validation of a Refrigerant-Based Cold-Gas Propulsion System for Small Satellites” (2010). He served as Managing Editor of The Journal of the Astronautical Sciences from 1999 to 2011 and holds memberships in AIAA, AAS, and ASEE. Key publications include “Development, Verification, and Analysis of a Small Satellite Thrust Determination Filter” (Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets, 2022), “Neural Network Attitude Control System Design for the Wallops Arc-Second Pointer” (Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics, 2022), and “Two-Level Targeter Convergence Study for Collinear Libration Point Spacecraft Formations” (IEEE Aerospace Conference Proceedings, 2022).