SpaceCom 2019

Kris Zacny
VP
Honeybee Robotics


Dr. Kris Zacny is Vice President of Exploration Technology Group at Honeybee Robotics. His expertise includes space mining, In Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU), and geotechnical systems. In his previous capacity as an engineer in South African gold, diamond, and coal mines, Dr. Zacny managed numerous mining projects and production divisions. Dr. Zacny received his PhD (UC Berkeley, 2005) in Geotechnical Engineering with an emphasis on Extraterrestrial Drilling and Mining, ME (UC Berkeley, 2001) in Petroleum Engineering with emphasis on Drilling and Materials Science, and BSc cum laude (U. Cape Town, 1997) in Mechanical Engineering. He has participated in several Antarctic, Arctic, Atacama, and Greenland expeditions. Dr Zacny has over 300 publications related to space mining and ISRU, he has been a Principal Investigator on over 100 ISRU and space mining projects, he has over 40 NASA New Technology Records and four NASA Group Achievement Awards. Dr. Zacny leads several flight programs including PlanetVac pneumatic sample delivery system for CLPS lunar landers, TRIDENT lunar drill for VIPER rover, Pneumatic Sampler for JAXA’s Martian Moons Exploration (MMX) mission to return samples from Phobos, and DrACO drilling and sample delivery system for NASA’s New Frontiers Dragonfly mission to Titan.

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