Keith Barr was born solely months earlier than the historic Apollo 11 touchdown in 1969. Whereas he was too younger to witness that big leap for mankind, the second sparked a lifelong fascination that set him on a path to design know-how that can carry astronauts farther into house than ever earlier than.
Immediately, Barr serves as a chief engineer and Orion Docking Lidar Discipline Check lead at NASA’s Johnson House Middle in Houston. He spearheads the sphere testing of docking lidars for the Orion spacecraft, which can carry astronauts to the Moon on the Artemis III mission. These lidars are essential to enabling Orion to autonomously dock with the human touchdown system on Artemis III — the mission that can land astronauts close to the Moon’s South Pole for the primary time in historical past.
“The Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions are a few of humanity’s best technical achievements,” he stated. “To be a part of the Artemis chapter is a profound honor.”
In recognition of his contributions, Barr was chosen as a NASA House Flight Consciousness Honoree in 2025 for his distinctive dedication to astronaut security and mission success. Established in 1963, NASA’s Space Flight Awareness Program celebrates people who play an important position in supporting human spaceflight. The award is likely one of the highest honors offered to the company’s workforce.
With a profession spanning over 25 years at Lockheed Martin, Barr is now acknowledged as a famend chief in lidar techniques—applied sciences that use laser mild to measure distances. He has led quite a few lidar deployments and check packages throughout business aviation, wind power, and navy markets.
In 2019, Barr and his group started planning a multi-phase subject marketing campaign to validate Orion’s docking lidars below real-world circumstances. They repurposed present {hardware}, developed a drone-based simulation system, and performed dynamic testing at Lockheed Martin amenities in Littleton, Colorado, and Santa Cruz, California.
In Littleton, the group performed two phases of testing on the House Operations Simulation Middle, evaluating efficiency throughout distances starting from 50 meters to docking. On the Santa Cruz facility, they started a lot farther out at 6,500 meters and examined right down to 10 meters, simply earlier than the ultimate docking part.
Of all these efforts, Barr is particularly happy with the ingenuity behind the Santa Cruz checks. To simulate a spacecraft docking state of affairs, he repurposed a lidar pointing gimbal and check trailer from earlier initiatives and designed a drone-based check system with unprecedented accuracy.
“An often-overlooked portion of any subject marketing campaign is the measurement and understanding of fact,” he stated. “The system I designed allowed us to document lidar and goal positions with accuracy by no means earlier than demonstrated in outside docking lidar testing.”
The check stand on the Santa Cruz Facility had as soon as been used for Agena higher stage rockets—a key piece of {hardware} used through the Gemini program within the Sixties. “We discovered a Gemini-era sticker on the door of the check bunker—doubtless from the time of Gemini VIII, the primary house docking accomplished by Neil Armstrong and David Scott,” Barr stated. “This actually introduced it house to me that we’re merely a part of the persevering with story.”
Barr spent greater than twenty years engaged on WindTracer—a ground-based Doppler wind lidar system used to measure wind pace and turbulence at airports, wind farms, and in atmospheric analysis.
The transition from WindTracer to Orion offered new challenges. “Shifting onto an area program has a steep studying curve, however I’ve discovered success on this new enviornment and I’ve realized that I can adapt and I shouldn’t be nervous concerning the unknown,” he stated. “Studying new applied sciences, functions, and expertise retains my profession enjoyable and thrilling and I stay up for the subsequent big leap—no matter it’s.”
Barr’s ardour for flight strikes in tandem along with his pursuit of innovation. Over his profession, he has flown over 1.6 million miles on business airways. “I usually joke that I’m on my fourth journey to the Moon and again—simply in economic system class,” he stated.
Earlier than specializing in lidar techniques, Barr flew as a captain and assistant chief pilot at New England Airways, working small plane just like the Piper Cherokee 6 and the Britten-Norman Islander.
He additionally labored on the Nationwide Middle for Atmospheric Analysis, contributing to a number of NASA airborne missions aimed toward unraveling the science behind world ozone depletion.
As Barr displays on his journey, he hopes to cross alongside a way of legacy to the Artemis Technology. “We’re within the strategy of writing the subsequent chapter of human house exploration historical past, and our actions, successes, and troubles shall be studied and analyzed effectively into the longer term,” he stated. “All of us want to contemplate how our actions will form historical past.”