Rate My Professor Kira Abercromby

Dr. Kira Jorgensen Abercromby is a Professor in the Aerospace Engineering Department at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, where she joined the faculty in 2008. She obtained her undergraduate degree in Astrophysics from the University of California, Los Angeles, and her master's and Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Colorado, Boulder. Her doctoral thesis addressed determining the material type of orbiting objects for orbital debris identification. Following her Ph.D., Abercromby conducted post-doctoral research at NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, continuing work on physical properties of orbital debris. She then held positions at Lockheed Martin and Jacobs Engineering in the Orbital Debris Program Office, Houston, where she advanced to project manager and performed optical measurements of orbital objects at Kitt Peak, Mauna Kea and Haleakala in Hawaii, and CTIO near La Serena, Chile.

Abercromby's research interests include astrodynamics, human space flight design, impact testing, orbital debris, and space environmental effects on materials. She teaches undergraduate and graduate orbital mechanics, co-developed the space environments course and lab, introduced MATLAB programming and Introduction to Aerospace courses to campus, and developed the elective Human Spacecraft Design. She has 26 publications with 180 citations, including 'Investigation Into Silicone-Silicate Conversion Mechanism and Atomic Oxygen Fluence Threshold in Low Earth Orbit Environment' (2025), 'Open Source Toolkit for Reentry Object Modeling' (2017), 'Laboratory Characterization of Homogeneous Spacecraft Materials' (2015), and multiple papers on photometric studies and optical observations of GEO debris from 2006 to 2011. Abercromby received Cal Poly's Distinguished Teaching Award in 2025 and the College of Engineering Don and Paula Heye Outstanding Advisor Award. She co-coordinates the Spectroscopy and Space Systems Lab and serves as Graduate Program Coordinator for Aerospace Engineering.