Astra hires longtime Apple veteran Benjamin Lyon as Chief Engineer

Astra hires longtime Apple veteran Benjamin Lyon as Chief Engineer

3 years ago
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https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/17/astra-hires-longtime-apple-veteran-benjamin-lyon-as-chief-engineer/

New Space startup Astra, which is currently focused on commercial rockets, but which plans to eventually build satellites, too, has hired one of Apple’s key engineering leaders to head its own engineering efforts. Benjamin Lyon spent over two decades at Apple, where he worked on everything from the iPhone, to input devices and sensor hardware, to special projects: the department at Apple working on autonomous vehicle technology.

“When I’ve looked at what to do next at Apple, it has always been this combination of ‘What is the most impactful thing that I can do for humanity?’ – the iPhone was very much one of these,” Lyon told me in an interview. “Phones were awful [at the time], and if we could fundamentally come up with a new interface, that would completely change how people interact with devices.”