Vishnu Reddy is a Professor of Planetary Sciences at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and the Director of Space Safety, Security and Sustainability Center (Space 4 Center) at the University of Arizona, in Tucson. Prior to serving as a faculty member at the UArizona, he was a research scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, from 2012-2016.
Prof. Reddy served as the investigation team lead on NASA Near-Earth Object Surveyor Mission to discover 90% of near-Earth objects (NEOs) larger than 140 meters to fulfill the George E. Brown Congressional mandate. He was a member on NASA’s Dawn mission working with the Framing Camera team at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany.
Since 2005, Prof. Reddy has been using the NASA IRTF on Mauna Kea, Hawaii to spectrally characterize small NEOs that make close flyby of the Earth. In addition to his work with NASA, Prof. Reddy is part of the Space Domain Awareness (SDA) program at the University of Arizona where he has developed a network of optical and RF sensors to characterize orbital debris and space objects in cislunar space for the United States Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL).
