TJ Mulich

TJ Mulich is a military brat whose dad served 22 years in the Navy. In 1985 he received his commission from the U. S. Naval Academy into the U. S. Marines, where he was an Infantry Officer and an Aerial Observer (flying in the backseat of OV-10 Broncos). Upon leaving active duty, he returned to college to get his Aerospace Engineering degree, hoping to design military aircraft or become an aerodynamicist for an automobile racing team.  Instead, in 1993, he became a flight controller for a direct broadcast satellite (Telstar 4) for AT&T. After a year of with that project, he went to work as a Realtime Engineer for two of Hughes' satellites called Landsat 4 & 5. In 1997 he went to work at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab on the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous. After landing NEAR on Eros, he worked on the Comet Nucleus Tour, MESSENGER, New Horizons, and STEREO. Tired of working in front of a monitor inside a cubicle, he decided to leave the space industry to become a professional truck driver where the view is constantly changing.