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Los Altos, CA, September 6 – Stellar Solutions, Inc., the global aerospace engineering services company, has named Úna Stanniland, seasoned advisor to space industry and government entities, as Director of UK Operations. Andrew Davies, a respected leader who significantly elevated the company’s presence in the UK, will continue his commitment to the company as Head of Special Projects.

“Expanding Stellar Solutions’ UK leadership team with Úna Stanniland is key to our global growth strategy. Úna’s knowledge, combined with her established relationships in the burgeoning space industry, adds to Andrew’s long-standing reputation as an industry expert and allows us to focus on our customer’s critical needs while collaborating closely with Europe and the US,” said Janet Grondin, CEO, Stellar Solutions.

Stanniland is a trusted aerospace expert who for over twenty years has delivered project and service management knowledge services across a diverse portfolio of defense and aerospace organizations, predominately for satcom capabilities. In close coordination with Davies, she has also worked as a Stellar Solutions Advisor over the past 18 months in planning and supporting the company’s growth.

For the last ten years, Stanniland led a consulting company serving industry, government and defense agencies, and managing important UK SATCOM programs. During this time, she led a multi-skilled, multi-organizational team to deliver an Invitation to Negotiate to Industry proposal worth roughly £1 billion for the next generation UK military satcom service. For Inmarsat, the British satellite telecommunications company, she managed the co-funded European Space Agency (ESA) program, ‘INVISON’, part of the Advanced Research in Telecommunications Systems (ARTES) nurturing innovation.

Earlier during her nine years at Airbus, most recently as Operating Officer and Satellite Programme Manager, she worked in Defense and Space on the Skynet 5 Programme. She began her career at Nortel Networks.

Over the last five years, Davies expanded the Stellar UK team of expert employees and Advisors and enhanced the Stellar Solutions UK operations and business processes, gaining ISO9001-2015 accreditation and cyber essentials certification. His 30 years of experience as a consultant and business manager in major space programs include his role as a prominent figure in the pilot program to set up the UK National Space Partnership. He has advised government agencies including ESA, UK Space Agency, NATO, UK Ministry of Defense, the EU, and other organizations in the international space industry supply chain.

He has extensive knowledge of the satcom sector in both military and civil domains and is currently leading the business analysis of products and services for an ESA project examining the role for satcom and 5G in support of autonomous platforms. He is also leading the Lender Technical advisor team on the Arctic Satellite Broadband Mission. Davies brings this gravitas to UKSpace, the official trade association of the UK space industry, as Vice Chair of the SME Committee.

About Stellar Solutions, Inc.

Stellar Solutions, Inc. is a global aerospace and systems engineering services provider to commercial, defense, intelligence, civil and international sectors.  Stellar Solutions provides systems engineering capabilities and strategic support for global communications, remote sensing, national defense, and space exploration. These solutions to customer critical needs connect technology and customers across multiple domains. With physical operations throughout the U.S. and around the globe, Stellar Solutions is a recognized leader in delivering end-to-end critical expertise and problem-solving skills. https://www.stellarsolutions.com/

Stellar Solutions was exceedingly proud to receive a letter of appreciation by US Air Force Academy Commandant of Cadets Brigadier General Paul Moga for our role in preparing his cadets for one of the greatest responsibilities in their military careers – conflicts in active duty. To deliver the premier quality training our troops deserve, Punch Moulton, our VP of Defense Support and Cyber Strategies (and a retired Major General), brought together an outstanding team of Stellar Advisors: Major General (ret) Duane Jones, RADM (ret) Dan Lloyd and Major General (ret) Pete Fesler. They are among the 80+ Stellar Advisors of top military experts and government officials who distinguish our ability to serve our clients. Brigadier General Moga’s recognition is particularly significant because he commands the 4,300-member Cadet Wing and more than 200 Air Force and civilian personnel. He guides the military training, leadership and character development, Basic Cadet Training, and Expeditionary Skills Training for the Cadet Wing. With a deep determination towards their success, Moulton’s team contributed personal time over the weekends to facilitate a series of sophisticated exercises addressing the opportunities and challenges of careers in the Air Force and Space Force.  Some examples:

• Jones facilitated maintenance, logistics, security forces, and medical exercises.
• Lloyd led the cadets’ planning and then role-played the President of the United States as the cadets delivered a “National Security Council” decision brief.
• Fesler and Moulton ran a high-end examination of “Integrated Air and Missile Defense,” that in Brigadier General Moga’s words, “began with a PhD-level look at Defense Design and then led the cadets through a challenging simulation of ballistic and cruise missile attacks.”

Stellar Solutions CEO Janet Grondin said, “We were extremely proud to have Punch, Duane, Dan, and Pete sharing their wisdom with our future Air and Space leaders.  Stellar Advisors help shape our future by training tomorrow’s decision-makers today.” See these photos from the Air Force Academy showing the Stellar Advisor team in action during the Integrated Air and Missile Defense simulations. ]>

Palo Alto, CA, November 14, 2022 – Stellar Solutions, Inc., the global aerospace engineering services leader, has named Dr. Agnès Lahure-Lecompte as Director of Stellar Solutions Aerospace France (SSAF).  Dr. Lahure-Lecompte joins SSAF after 28 years in the industry, 21 of those with Airbus Defence & Space, where she held numerous critical management and business development positions. Stellar Solutions Aerospace France is engaged across the global market for satellite communications, remote sensing, launch, and on-orbit capabilities.

Dr. Lahure-Lecompte was most recently Proposal Manager for EUTELSAT 36X, a multi-beam satellite for broadcast and telecommunications services, at Airbus Defence & Space. Prior to that, she was the company’s Program Manager for Inmarsat 6 F2, served as Head of Payload Engineering from 2016 -2017, and managed launch campaigns for AMU1 and EB9B/EDRS-A on the Proton rocket. Earlier in her career, she worked at Thales Alenia Space and Aerospatiale as an antenna software manager.

“Dr. Lehure-Lecompte is a proven leader in the aerospace industry with the experience to take our global customers to the next level of performance.  Under her leadership, Stellar Solutions Aerospace France will support manufacturing and deployment of critical space capabilities that connect and inform friends and allies across the globe,” said Stellar Solutions CEO Janet Grondin.   
  
Dr. Lahure-Lecompte earned her Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from Université Bordeaux I in 1997 while working on ionic propulsion at Airbus, formerly Matra Marconi Space, in the Mathematics Methods and Analysis Software Development Department.

SSAF is owned by Stellar Solutions, Inc. and is part of a constellation of companies operating seamlessly to serve customers across global markets. Together with Stellar Solutions Aerospace Limited, based in the United Kingdom, SSAF represents the International sector of Stellar Solutions and is one of the “five points of the star” that also include commercial, defense, intelligence, and civil sectors. 

About Stellar Solutions, Inc.:  Stellar Solutions, Inc. is a global aerospace and systems engineering services provider to commercial, defense, intelligence, civil and international sectors.  Stellar Solutions provides systems engineering capabilities and strategic support for global communications, remote sensing, national defense, and space exploration. These solutions to customer critical needs connect technology and customers across multiple domains. With physical operations throughout the U.S. and around the globe, Stellar Solutions is a recognized leader in delivering end-to-end critical expertise and problem-solving skills. https://www.stellarsolutions.com/

Palo Alto, CA, October 14 – QuakeFinder, Stellar Solutions’ earthquake forecasting research initiative, and Google Research have published a study in American Geophysical Union’s (AGU) Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth that advances the pursuit of predictive data in alerting the public to impending earthquakes. The team identified a signal of modest but statistically significant size in the days immediately preceding intermediate to large earthquakes in California.  The full publication of Case-Control Study on a Decade of Ground-Based Magnetometers in California Reveals Modest Signal 24–72 hr Prior to Earthquakes can be viewed at https://doi.org/10.1029/2022JB024109 .

“Data science and artificial intelligence are giving scientists new tools to understand the physical world.  We are excited that our research combined with Stellar Solutions’ unique magnetometer recordings is hinting at previously unknown physical phenomena in earthquake forecasting,” said Jason Miller, Product Management Director for Google Applied Science.

The Google Applied Sciences team led the effort, designed the study, and performed the analysis with exceptional rigor. Quakefinder, the humanitarian R&D division of Stellar Solutions, provided the data and verified the findings.

“This study provides important evidence that a physical change can be observed in the days before an earthquake. While we still have much work to do in identifying stronger signals, this research supports our vision that earthquake forecasting using the magnetic field may one day be possible,” said Dan Schneider, QuakeFinder’s Director of Research and Development.

QuakeFinder, which is seeking to ultimately save lives by forecasting earthquakes, has collected data since 2005 using over 150 stations around the world. Their high-resolution magnetometer recordings have captured thousands of earthquakes (M3.0 or greater) to support their work in developing algorithms to analyze these signals.

This is the second study that has evaluated the QuakeFinder California dataset and the second one to find a statistically significant correlation between activity in the magnetic field and earthquakes days later.  In 2019, QuakeFinder published the first comprehensive evaluation of this dataset in Computers and Geosciences: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cageo.2019.104317.  This used single station data and different algorithms but the same data set and found statistical correlations prior to quakes greater than M4.

The second study (by Google) achieved a Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) of 0.5 when comparing the magnetic data recorded 24-72 hours before earthquakes (greater than magnitude 4.5) to data recorded earlier. A supplemental analysis added a compensation factor for the average global magnetic activity and this boosted the SNR from 0.5 to 0.96. As an SNR of 1 or greater is typically considered a compelling result in the physical sciences, this analysis points toward the magnetic field being a valuable source of information in the earthquake forecasting process.

The study employed a number of strategies to ensure rigor. One was to combine signals from pairs of stations to guard against noise that might pollute the data at a single station, such as automobile traffic, construction and other human activity near the station’s location. Another strategy was to control for variations across different stations, locations and geologies by using a case-control construction in which data from station pairs close to an earthquake (~30km) are compared to other time periods from the same station pair. These strategies help to eliminate false positives.

“As a next step in our research, when correcting for global magnetic activity, we can look to use actual high resolution remote station data provided by QuakeFinder rather than the low resolution global average provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, as it may allow the signal to become even more apparent,” Schneider added.  He noted that this study was conducted on data collected in California; and its results cannot be assumed for other fault types or geologic conditions. 

Stellar Solutions is a Malcolm Baldrige Award-winning company that for 27 years has solved some of the most complex systems engineering problems, from national security to space exploration, across commercial and government sectors. Founder Celeste Ford’s vision, satisfying customer critical needs while realizing employee dream jobs, led to the creation of QuakeFinder in 2001.

Stellar Solutions has invested over $30-million in the QuakeFinder program, augmented by partial grants from NASA, the U.S. Department of Defense, PG&E and the Musk Foundation.  The initiative has drawn on the expertise of leading aerospace organizations like NASA, geoscientists from Stanford University and University of California at Berkeley, Stellar Solutions’ own systems engineers, and partners around the world including from Peru, Taiwan and Greece. Originally inspired by Stanford research after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in California, QuakeFinder founder Tom Bleier devised the idea of placing sensors underground every 20 miles close to the fault trace to capture pre-seismic electromagnetic disturbances.

“The QuakeFinder/Google team is very proud to have advanced the state of earthquake forecasting and we look forward to a global effort to build on this important work and save lives,” Ford said.

About Stellar Solutions, Inc.:  Stellar Solutions, Inc. is a global aerospace and systems engineering services provider to commercial, defense, intelligence, civil and international sectors.  Stellar Solutions provides systems engineering capabilities and strategic support for global communications, remote sensing, national defense, and space exploration. These solutions to customer critical needs connect technology and customers across multiple domains. With physical operations throughout the U.S. and around the globe, Stellar Solutions is a recognized leader in delivering end-to-end critical expertise and problem-solving skills. https://www.stellarsolutions.com/