As we await the TDRS-M launch from our Space Coast, a longtime engineer reflects on his career — one that began in the origins of that communications satellite program.

  • Engineer Phil Henderson, a 40-year employee with Harris Corp.
  • Henderson helped design first TDRS
  • Latest TDRS-M launches Aug. 20

"It's been a good run, I've had a lot of opportunities," said Phil Henderson, who recently marked four decades at Melbourne-based Harris Corporation.

As a young engineer in the late 1970s, the Florida Tech grad helped design the first Tracking and Data Relay Satellite.

It's much like the one displayed at Harris today, which works like an old-style umbrella.

It was an early generation part of a low Earth orbit system allowing constant communications from the ground to places like the Hubble Space Telescope and the International Space Station.

"I worked in the design of the thermal controls that maintained the temperature balance of the antenna," Henderson said.

The latest, more advanced TRDS-M satellite is set to launch in mid-August from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

The 8,000 pound spacecraft is expected to last in orbit for more than a decade.

Henderson is proud his team built the first 12 of them, and that the program continues to this day. But he's equally proud of the current 200 member Harris team working on a variety of space antenna and structure projects.

"Now it's blossomed into multiple programs running at one time," he said.

And a young engineer who blossomed into a team leader, still working at Harris forty years later.

The TDRS-M mission is set to launch on board a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket on Aug. 20 from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.


CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story said Henderson was retiring from Harris Corp. Henderson says that is not the case and he is still very much with the company.