Derek S. Nelson

Derek S. Nelson is an interplanetary navigation specialist at the Space Navigation and Flight Dynamics (SNAFD) Practice of KinetX, Inc., and served as the optical navigation team lead for NASA's New Horizons Kuiper Belt Extended Mission (KEM) to Arrokoth in 2019. He currently provides optical navigation support for NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission to asteroid Bennu, Lucy mission to the Jupiter trojan asteroids, and previously for the New Horizons' reconnaissance of the Pluto system in 2015. He is the chief architect of KinetX' Image Processing (KXIMP) optical navigation software suite which serves as KinetX' primary tool for astrometric analysis and space image correction and calibration. Apart from his role as an optical navigation engineer, he currently serves as the navigation team chief for New Horizons and the deputy navigation team chief for NASA's LunaH-Map CubeSat mission to the Moon, providing navigation system development support and leadership.