Spotlight On: John Palmé (Cont.)

It wasn’t just the rockets that brought him back to ILS. Palmé says that he wanted to have the opportunity again to work with so many of the people he held in such high regard over the years – not just within ILS, but also the customers, spacecraft manufacturers and, especially, our Russian partners.

In his earlier work with ILS, he helped secure the first contract for an Astrium spacecraft to launch on a Proton vehicle, and worked Proton’s first integration of an Astrium E3000 SC. Palmé’s experience in the space industry includes more than 40 launches on Pegasus, Taurus, Delta II, space shuttle, Atlas and Proton vehicles. He considers the Intelsat 10-02 the most interesting Proton launch he worked on, because it was the first with a payload greater than 5.5 metric tons. Now, Palmé is in Baikonur working on the DIRECTV 10 launch, his first campaign since returning to ILS. It also happens to be the first launch featuring additional Proton performance enhancements that will boost lift capability to more than 6 metric tons.

Palmé received his masters and bachelors degrees in mechanical engineering from Villanova University. He started his career at RCA Aerospace, which was sold to GE Aerospace, then to Martin Marietta, and finally merged with Lockheed. He also spent three years at Orbcomm Global (a small-satellite constellation of 35). He has worked in nearly every space industry niche: GEO, LEO, HEO, government, civil, commercial, domestic, international, and every size from less than 100 pound satellites to those weighing in at over 10,000 pounds. He also performed work in every aspect of the industry from design and development to launch operations, on both the launcher and spacecraft sides.

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