Lars Blackmore

Principal Mars Landing Engineer (rocket landing/GNC)

Lars Blackmore is a British-American aerospace engineer who led the guidance, navigation and control work that made Falcon 9 boosters reusable. From 2011 to 2018 he was responsible for the rocket’s entry, descent and landing, and his team achieved the first controlled landing of an orbital-class booster in December 2015 — since followed by hundreds of landings. A Cambridge and MIT graduate, he now leads landing systems for Starship.