Sandia Lab News

Sandia aerospace engineer to head national institute

Members of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics elected Basil Hassan, a senior manager and engineering program deputy, as the group’s next president. The AIAA represents more than 30,000 individual and 95 corporate members from the aeronautics and space community. Basil will begin a yearlong stint as president-elect of the institute in May, and then serve a two-year term as president starting in May 2020.

Future hypersonics could be artificially intelligent

A test launch for a hypersonic weapon — a long-range missile that flies a mile per second and faster — takes weeks of planning, and it's uncertain how useful test systems will be against urgent, mobile or evolving threats. But Sandia's hypersonics developers think artificial intelligence and autonomy could slash these weeks to minutes for deployed systems.

B61-12 team reaches milestones in nuclear deterrence mission

Sandia’s B61-12 nuclear weapons team has accomplished several milestones, including the gravity bomb’s final design review and the first production completion of several components for the life extension program. Sandia and LANL presented the B61-12 design for final review to an independent peer-review panel of 12 military and civilian experts last fall.

David Chacon honored with Legion of Merit

David Chacon, who works in Sandia’s information technology audits group, has been awarded the Department of Defense Legion of Merit for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding services and achievements during his tenure in the U.S. Army.