Brandon Stiltner Email and Phone Number

Brandon is an Aerospace Engineer with over 14 years of experience in the areas of flight dynamics and control, modeling and simulation, testing, and analysis. He holds Part 107 Commercial Drone Pilot License, is an Associate Fellow of the AIAA, a Certified Modeling and Simulation Professional, and a member of the AIAA Modeling and Simulation Technical Committee. He obtained his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Aerospace Engineering from Virginia Tech in 2007 and 2011, respectively.He is currently a Senior GNC Engineer at Draper, having worked on a variety of Projects spanning the Missile Defense Agency. Most recently, Brandon was the Control Lead for one of the NASA Human Lander System design teams. Notably, Brandon and his team developed the control system for the lander design, which was integrated into multiple flight simulators including NASA Ames Vertical Motion Simulator. During simulation tests, Brandon was fortunate to fly the simulation as co-pilot alongside former astronauts testing the control system’s handling qualities and performance.Prior to Draper, Brandon was part of the Flight Dynamics Team for the Space Launch System (SLS). The SLS is slated to return humans to the moon, and eventually take us to Mars. Tasks included analyzing the various separation events, ensuring that all separating hardware do not recontact the rocket. Prior to his current role, Brandon was the lead control engineer for the Reaction Control System on a CubeSat project known as the Near Earth Asteroid Scout. He developed a flight control system for the spacecraft's RCS, and also modeled the RCS hardware. Prior to NASA, Brandon led a team of four engineers during three successful wind-tunnel tests involving a ducted-fan propulsor. The propulsor was developed under the IARPA Great Horned Owl project to research quiet propulsion for unmanned aircraft. Using wind-tunnel data, he produced an aerodynamic model of the propulsor. On a similar project, he used wind-tunnel data to develop on-board, flight-control models for the RQ-16 T-Hawk. Finally, Brandon has been involved with the systematic development of unmanned aircraft from conceptual design through wind-tunnel and flight testing. Not only does he have a great understanding of the physics, but also a breadth of hands-on experience with aerospace hardware, electronics, and manufacturing techniques. He has built various prototype unmanned aircraft and wind-tunnel models using composite manufacturing, and is experienced with most common lab machinery and tools.