Rodrigo Romo (Phto courtesy of PISCES)

MEDIA RELEASE

The Pacific International Space Center for Exploration Systems (PISCES) has a new member on its team. Rodrigo Romo of Hilo was chosen for the full-time PISCES Project Manager position.

Romo has spent the last 16 years as the Vice President of Engineering for Zeta Corporation, a company that offers green technology solutions for water conservation and fouling prevention in water systems.

His interest in renewable energy, sustainable agriculture, water conservation, environmental technologies and space exploration is outlined throughout his career, beginning with an experiment inside Biosphere 2, an Earth systems science facility in Arizona dedicated to the research and understanding of global scientific issues and sustainability with applications toward space settlements.

There were two missions that involved sealing a crew inside the glass enclosure to measure sustainability, and Romo was a crew member for the second mission.

After the experiment, he served as Plant Manager for their 6 MW co-generating plant.

Romo has also worked as a project manager for large water conservation projects for the U.S. military and private industries.

As PISCES Project Manager, Romo will develop, organize, manage and lead PISCES projects across federal/state/corporate sectors while providing management with transparency in tracking project costs and budgets.

Additionally, Romo will lead PISCES’s planetary robotics project.

He has a Bachelor’s Degree in Chemical Engineering from ITESO University in Guadalajara and a MBA from the University of Arizona.

Romo began his duties Jan. 13.

New PISCES Communications System

PISCES, is now armed with new hardware that allows the Center to offer a planetary communications system that is similar to the kind used in a real-life mission to outer space.

PISCES Visiting NASA Engineer, Marc Seibert, as well as Vincent Paul Ponthieux and Aleks Velhner of Blue Planet Research, designed and built the wi-fi relay system, which relays the internet from Hale Pohaku where the fiber optics NASA port is located, to the PISCES planetary analogue test site in the next valley.

The wi-fi radio receiver/transmitter is on the top of the pole, the solar cells used to recharge the batteries is on the angle and the batteries, power inverters, and other electronics are in the black plastic case underneath.

PISCES can now provide a simulated environment that’s even closer to the real-life communications network needed to “talk to” and control a robotic spacecraft from Earth, factoring in, for example the time delay between our home and other planets.