Dave Murrow (AeroEngr BS'84)
Dave Murrow retired in 2023, capping a 36-year career serving the space exploration community. In retirement, he sits on NASA’s Planetary Science Advisory committee, works with the Colorado state economic development office, and has established a consulting business, Space Connections.
Murrow’s most recent professional role was as the leader of Lockheed Martin’s Deep Space Exploration Business Development team. He worked with executives, communicators, and program execution teams to develop a multi-mission, 7-year backlog in the DSE market segment. He served in similar roles for the Lockheed Martin Human Spaceflight Advanced Programs team and for the Ball Aerospace Space Science and Exploration team.
At Lockheed Martin, he worked towards an expansive vision of exploration by designing human missions to the Moon, Mars, and asteroids. At Ball, he expanded the company’s NASA footprint through pursuit of NASA science, technology, and human exploration missions.
Murrow joined industry after 13 years with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he began as an orbit determination analyst for the Galileo mission to Jupiter and served as the Cassini Mission Systems Engineer. Beckoned by Mars, he participated in the contract award, flight system development of the twin Mars '98 spacecraft. Adding the Stardust mission to Mars Climate Orbiter and Mars Polar lander, he managed the successful “3-peat” launch campaign between December 1998 and February 1999.
His JPL role followed aerospace engineering degrees at the University of Texas at Austin (MS ’87), and the University of Colorado Boulder (BS ’84, Honors). In Austin, he worked at the University’s Center for Space Research, supporting high precision Earth gravity field development for the Topex mission. In 2003, Murrow inaugurated a graduate semester class in Interplanetary Mission Design in CU Boulder Aerospace. Over the last decade, he has also lectured on Launch Vehicles for CU Boulder’s unique
A native of Boulder, Colorado, Dave now lives in Highlands Ranch with his wife, and has two grown daughters. He spends his free time traveling, reading, skiing, and hiking in the mountains.