Craig Kent:
CLASS OF 1971
Charter Oak High SchoolClass of 1971
Covina, CA
California Polytechnic State UniversityClass of 1995
San luis obispo, CA
Craig's Story
I moved to Newport Beach in 1972. I worked in Optical Fabrication (Precision Lens Making)from 1972 to 1978.
In January 1975 I married Michele A. Porada (South Hills High).
I was hired by Santa Barbara Research Center in June 1978 and we moved to Goleta (near Santa Barbara). We bought a home (where I still live) in Solvang in September 1979.
I attended off campus classes for a degree in business administration from 1982 to 1984 at University of Redlands, Alfred North Whitehead Center. Later I attended Cal Poly San Luis Obispo from 1991 - 1995 and received a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics. I took off campus graduate courses in Optical Sciences from University of Arizona, Optical Sciences Center in 1995/1996. More recently I took a few Systems Engineering courses and received a certificate in Systems Engineering from Cal Tech in 2002.
After 20 years of marriage Michele and I divorced in October 1995. We were unable to have children.
Raytheon bought Hughes Aircraft (and subsidiary Santa Barbara Research Center) in 1999. In February 2008 Raytheon closed the Goleta facility where I was working and after supporting the closeout of the building I began commuting to El Segundo (next to LAX) for work.
I traveled a fair amount for the company and have spent significant time in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. While on field assignments I lived in Boulder, Colorado, Greenville, Texas and both Anchorage and Shemya, Alaska.
I retired from Raytheon on December 1, 2008 after continuously working in the same business unit for over 30 years building spaceborne instruments for Earth resources, Earth weather as well as planetary missions. The instruments I made significant contributions to include; Thematic Mappers (TM) for Landsat 4 & Landsat 5, Enhanced TM for Landsat 6, Enhanced TM+ for Landsat 7, Moderate Resolution Spectroradiometer (MODIS) for Earth Observation System (EOS) Terra and Aqua, Sea Viewing Wide Field Sensor (SeaWiFS)as well as the Miniature Thermeal Emission Spectrometer (MiniTes) instrument on one of the MARS rovers. Most recently I helped architect as well as lea...Expand for more
d the Optical design effort for the Visible Infrared Imaging Spectroradiometer Suite (VIIRS) for the National Polar Orbiting Operational Satellite System (NPOESS) which became the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS). More recently I supported the optical design and analysis work for NASA's Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) satellite Ocean Color Instrument. =.
I worked on several other programs as well including GOES, OAMP, Common Module and Javelin.
Since retiring I have provided independent consulting to the Government. I stopped running my own consulting business for 9 months before becoming an employee of Stellar Solutions, Inc. in order to get a long term assignment on a Government technical oversight team. In this role I spent four days and 3 nights a week in El Segundo, CA. where I provided technical oversight for the VIIRS Flight 2 and Flight 3 sensors. I left Stellar Solutions in 2015 and have been contracting my own company, Craig Kent Technical Solutions, through Genesis Engineering to NASA Goddard since 2015. I also was a guest researcher at the National Institutes of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, MD during 2015 assisting in the development of a Flat Panel Illuminator calibration device for Earth resources Sensors.
Wendie (Frazier) Newby and I rekindled our High School romance several years ago and we now both live together in Solvang, Ca. Wendie worked from her home office for Intel and has been retired since 2016.
In addition to contract work I have a small outdoor product company called Wild Ideas, LLC that my two partners and I founded about 20 years ago. The website can be found at by searching on our main product the "Bearikade".
I am an avid participant in outdoor activities including fishing, mountain bike riding, kayaking, white water rafting, alpine skiing, scuba diving, and backpacking/mountaineering. I am also active in the railroad motorcar hobby and enjoy operating "speeders" on second and third class railroads around the country (including Alaska) but mostly on the narrow gauge lines in Colorado and New Mexico (look up NARCOA on the web)
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