Jared Daum, NASA's parachute development chief for the Orion spacecraft

Jared Daum serves as NASA’s Parachute System Manager at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, overseeing every aspect of the Orion parachute system along with the Commercial Crew Program parachute systems for SpaceX and Boeing. Raised in Decatur, Illinois, Jared attended MacArthur High School, dedicating much of his time to music programs and gaining hands-on experience at their father’s robotics lab at Richland Community College. Initially pursuing music performance, Jared later transitioned to aerospace engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. A series of internships at Rolls-Royce in Indianapolis, Northrop Grumman in California, and NASA paved the way for a full-time engineering role at Johnson Space Center in 2011. Over the past 15 years, Jared has played a pivotal role in designing, developing, testing, and integrating parachute systems for Orion, Boeing, and SpaceX. His contributions to the field include numerous papers published through the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics on spacecraft parachute design, analysis, testing, and instrumentation, as well as patents for innovative instrumentation techniques.

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