Space flight project manager to lecture at IHMC

Dr. Butler Hine [Photo courtesy IHMC]

Dr. Butler Hine is a space flight project manager at the NASA Ames Research Center, currently for the HelioSwarm mission. He will lecture at the Institute for Human & Machine Cognition in Ocala on March 11 about the promise of spacecraft swarm missions.

Hine said that, in layman’s terms, the gist of the talk is this: “Our un-manned science spacecraft missions have historically been expensive, which has severely limited how often we can fly them and how much we can accomplish. Recent technology advancements on the ground and now in space are enabling swarm spacecraft missions that are more capable, less expensive and more robust/resilient.”

Hine earlier served as the project manager for the LADEE mission, a lunar science orbiter that launched in 2013 and successfully completed its mission in 2014. LADEE measured lunar dust and examined the lunar exosphere near its pristine state, prior to future human activity. LADEE also tested an optical communications payload from the Moon, which is an important technology enabling high-bandwidth communications links for future planetary missions, according to IHMC.

Before that, he managed the Small Spacecraft Division at NASA ARC, which developed ways to build low-cost, high-performance spacecraft to enable future NASA missions. He also managed programs such as the Robotic Lunar Exploration Program; the Computing, Information and Communications Technology Program; and the Intelligent Systems Program.

His earlier NASA career includes directing the Intelligent Mechanisms Laboratory at NASA Ames Research Center, which pioneered the use of telepresence and virtual reality to control remote science exploration systems.

Hine was born in Tacoma, Washington, but said he was an “Army brat” so his family moved a lot while he was growing up. He said that as a child, “I was both an outdoor fanatic as well as a nerdy bookworm.”

“I loved to go camping and hiking but would usually take a book with me. I was also the mad-scientist type who tried to burn down our house on a couple of occasions,” he shared.

Hine said he was part of the Apollo Moon Landings generation, “so I grew up wanting to be an astronaut.

“I was aiming at NASA from a young age. Apollo 11 was the single driver for most of my education and career. That event captured a whole generation of us,” he stated.

Outside of his work with NASA, Hine was president and CEO of a software start-up company that developed advanced visualization tools for managing large corporate networks. He continues to enjoy hiking, camping and flying as a civilian pilot.

“I also trained in martial arts most of my life but have had to slow that down as I got older,” he noted.

During his lecture in Ocala, Hine will discuss the technological advancements being used for spacecraft swarm missions and how those are being deployed, tested and adopted into future missions.

Each of the IHMC Ocala evening lectures begins with a reception at 5:30 p.m. at the campus at 15 SE Osceola Ave. in downtown Ocala. Seating is limited so guests are asked to RSVP to ihmc-20250311.eventbrite.com or by calling (352) 387-3050.

To learn more, go to ihmc.us/life/evening_lectures/ocala-lecture-series