Adam Hibberd a pianist, composer and astronautical research volunteer.
Adam Hibberd is a volunteer software engineer and research engineer/scientist for the UK non-profit ‘Initiative for Interstellar Studies’ where he has researched missions to the interstellar object ‘Oumuamua, i.e. Project Lyra. He is also a pianist and composer.
He spent his early years up to the age of four in Tanzania, East Africa where his father worked as a lecturer for the University of Dar es Salaam.
He grew up in Coventry concentrating on STEM subjects but also reaching grade 8 in the piano. He later studied physics and maths at Keele University.
Joining the Ariane 4 Flight Software team in 1990 in Camberley Surrey, he progressed to become Guidance expert and was also the lead on several Flight Program software campaigns, including Topex/Poseidon for instance.
He then redirected his attention to music and eventually as a member of Superheroes Dream produced a vinyl record on the Coventry Tin Angel record label. He has various piano music compositions on his Youtube channel which can be found here:
He returned to space in 2017 when as a challenge to learn the MATLAB programming language, he decided to develop some preliminary mission design interplanetary trajectory software. He derived the theory and implemented the equations into a MATLAB application he called ‘Optimum Interplanetary Trajectory Software’ (OITS).
When the first Interstellar Object ‘Oumuamua was discovered in that same year and inspired by the Arthur C. Clarke novel ‘Rendezvous with Rama’, he set about the task of using OITS to solve missions to this object.
He discovered that the Initiative for Interstellar Studies (i4is) had instigated Project Lyra to perform a study into missions to ‘Oumuamua. After contacting i4is, a fruitful relationship then ensued with several papers on the subject, published by Acta Astronautica.