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Edward Hertz

Center for Astrophysics
Project/Mechanical/Systems Engineer

About

Ed began his career with the Westinghouse Defense and Electronics Systems Center in Baltimore, MD in 1983 working on radar, FLIR, and IRST systems. He joined the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in 1986 to work on the High Resolution Camera (HRC) for Chandra and to support the development of several ground based instruments for the MMT. For the past 30 years, he has worked on the design and development of both space and ground-based instruments, including HRC, Decaspec, Hectospec, HARPS-N, G-CLEF, IRIS, Advanced X-Ray Optics, MaGIXS, Arcus, ESCAPE, and SEEJ. In addition to being an experienced designer of precision opto-mechanical assemblies and an optical alignment specialist, Ed has directed the efforts of multi-disciplined engineering and technical teams from project conception through sub-assembly alignment and integration. He is currently the Lead Mechanical Engineer for the Arcus Instrument X-ray telescope assembly and is developing the design and alignment plans for several other flight instruments.

B.S. Mechanical Engineering - Tufts University