CEO and Founder, Micro Aerospace Solutions, Inc.
Dr. Don Platt has 30 years of experience developing small satellites and ISS payload systems. He is also Associate Professor of Space Systems at the Florida Institute of Technology and Department Chair for Aerospace, Physics and Space Sciences.
Dr Platt founded Micro Aerospace Solutions (MAS) in 2000 to develop small satellite and payload systems using his expertise in multiple domains. At MAS, Dr. Platt has led design teams in diverse areas such as avionics/electronics design, biotechnology, software development, propulsion systems and sensor systems. He worked with NASA on many life sciences experiments on both the ISS and standalone cubesats. He has assisted many groups in realizing their system designs to allow them to get quickly and effectively to market in such broad business areas as sensors, medical devices, environmental control, asset management as well as aerospace. Services provided ranged from designing, developing and testing systems to helping develop engineering/technology development plans. Other projects Dr. Platt has worked on include propulsion system development and attitude control for small and nanosatellites as well as Inertial Measurement Units. Dr Platt has been Principal Investigator on several NASA SBIR projects to design and test propulsion and rocket technology systems.
Prior to founding MAS, Dr. Platt was a Flight Experiments engineer for the Bionetics Corporation, designing and building space shuttle mid-deck experiments. He was lead computer systems engineer for the NASA BIOTUBE experiment that flew on Space Shuttle Columbia (STS107). The Boeing Corporation also employed Dr. Platt as a Command and Data Handling Systems Engineer on the International Space Station project at Kennedy Space Center.
A leader in space-related education in Florida Dr. Platt has mentored students from elementary school children to graduate students. His innovative space systems master’s programs at the Florida Institute of Technology provides students the opportunity to complete degrees in space systems, management and commercial enterprise in space. Those students have gone on to be leaders in the global space industry in government as well as commercial space. They have become astronauts, astronaut finalists, commanding officers of Air Force space wings, started successful aerospace companies and been leaders in other aerospace organizations. Dr Platt also mentored high school teams such as Merritt Island High School design and build their own cubesats and is now involved with two elementary schools as they design build and launch their own small space missions.
Dr Platt has published and presented papers at numerous international conferences and symposiums. He is a Consulting Editor for McGraw-Hill and curriculum developer for study.com and was awarded the State of Florida’s International Business Ambassador award by Governor Rick Scott while on a trade mission with him in Israel. Dr. Platt appears often in visual and print media providing commentary on the space industry.