// About

Christina Kneis Wolfenden

Product management at Planet. A decade of delivery at NASA/JPL.

What I'm Known For

Driving product and project success through systems thinking, technical rigor, and operational excellence.

For 10 years, I operated at the heart of NASA's most ambitious missions, and now I bring that same approach to satellite imaging and product management at Planet. I solve the right problems by developing deep context across the full lifecycle, solve them well with hands-on technical fluency from hardware to cloud, and deliver results by building trust and momentum across teams, leadership, and stakeholders.

Career Highlights

Product Management
Senior Product Manager
Planet · Imagery Products, Collection & Capacity
Owns satellite collection orchestration and capacity planning, optimizing scheduling logic and system throughput to scale Planet's global imaging capabilities.
Mission Management
Mission Manager
NASA/JPL · Lunar Flashlight
Navigated a significant propulsion anomaly in-flight, protected scientific return, and championed innovation under pressure.
Mission Operations
Systems Engineer
NASA/JPL · Mars 2020, INCUS, MRO, Europa Clipper
Led mission-level system design and planning, orchestrated cross-team coordination, resolved high-stakes anomalies and built secure, scalable tools and infrastructure.
Ground Data Systems
GDS Engineer
NASA/JPL · MRO, INCUS Constellation
Built ground data system infrastructure for handling mission telemetry, managed system readiness, cyber compliance, and system resilience.
Research
Subject Matter Expert
NASA/JPL · Miniature IMUs
Published original research on long-term behavior of miniaturized IMUs in deep-space environments.

Education

M.S.
Product Dev Systems Eng
USC
2024
B.S.
Mechanical Engineering
USC
2017

Recognition

11
NASA/JPL Awards
6
Missions Recognized

Recipient of multiple NASA Voyager, Team, and Group Achievement awards spanning Europa Clipper, INCUS, Lunar Flashlight, Mars 2020, InSight, and MRO. Consistently recognized for leadership, outstanding engineering analysis, dedication, and innovative problem-solving in mission-critical environments.

View Full Awards List