By Lily Lewis, Originally published by Michigan Aerospace
The $35 million Space Power and Propulsion for Agility, Responsiveness and Resilience (SPAR) Institute, an award under the USSF University Consortium, has an ambitious set of goals to tackle in the coming year. To facilitate the push toward these goals, SPAR has appointed two dedicated chief engineers – one for the power division and one for the propulsion division. One of these chief engineers is Eric Viges, a Lead Engineer for U-M’s Space Physics Research Laboratory and the Plasmadynamics and Electric Propulsion Laboratory (PEPL).
As one of the key players in the new institute, Viges is taking on the technical leadership role as head of the institute’s power division. With this, he will be coordinating different elements of the power side to bring together sub team members and do systems demonstrations in Year 2 and Year 5 of the project.