About me
Mike is receiving a Gateway to Space award.
Michael J. Mackowski is a retired spacecraft engineer whose career spanned 45 years. He has worked on such programs as Landsat 8, the Fermi and Swift gamma ray observatories, the Iridium communications satellite constellation, several other NASA science satellites, and the Space Shuttle. He started his career with McDonnell Douglas Astronautics Company in St. Louis, Missouri in 1977 and retired in 2018 as an employee of Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems (formerly Orbital ATK) in Gilbert, Arizona.
Outside the workplace, Mr. Mackowski is very involved in space advocacy and promoting the benefits of space
exploration. He is an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), the
world’s largest professional society for engineers and scientists working the aerospace industry. Mr. Mackowski
is the current chair of the Phoenix Section of the AIAA and is a member of the AIAA History committee. He is a
past president of the Phoenix chapters of both the National Space Society (NSS) and the Moon Society, and was co-founder of the St. Louis chapter of the NSS in 1984. He is also a well-regarded scale model builder,
specializing in historical space vehicles.
Mr. Mackowski is also very involved in pre-college (STEM) outreach, having organized many public events and
campaigns to promote the benefits of space exploration to students as well as the general public. He manages
several websites and social media outlets for those local outreach events and organizations. For additional
information on his background and other interests, please see: http://space-city-mike.net
