Kris Zacny

Dr. Kris Zacny is Vice President of Exploration Technology Group at Honeybee Robotics. His interests include soil and rock mechanics, sample acquisition and processing, extraterrestrial drilling, and In Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU). In his previous capacity as an engineer in South African underground gold, diamond, and coal mines, Dr. Zacny managed numerous mining projects and production divisions. Dr. Zacny received his PhD (UC Berkeley, 2005) in Geotechnical Engineering with an emphasis on Extraterrestrial Drilling and Mining, ME (UC Berkeley, 2001) in Petroleum Engineering with emphasis on Drilling and Materials Science, and BSc cum laude (U. Cape Town, 1997) in Mechanical Engineering. He participated in several Antarctic, Arctic, Atacama, and Greenland expeditions. Dr Zacny has approximately 200 publications, over 40 NASA New Technology Records and four NASA Group Achievement Awards. Currently he leads DrACO drilling and sample delivery system for Dragonfly, PlanetVac pneumatic sample delivery system for Commerial Lunal Payload Systems (CLPS) lunar lander and the TRIDENT lunar drill for VIPER rover.