Professor Emeritus and former director of the Space Propulsion Lab, Manuel Martínez-Sánchez, was awarded the Ernst Stuhlinger Medal for Outstanding Achievement in Electric Propulsion at the 2025 International Electric Propulsion Conference (IEPC) in London. Bestowed by the Electric Rocket Propulsion Society (ERPS), the Stuhlinger Medal is the highest distinction in the field of electric propulsion and recognizes “outstanding technical or leadership contributions in Electric Propulsion engineering, science, technology, education, management, information exchange, or influencing programs that have led to important advancement in the field.” The citation for Prof. Martínez-Sánchez’s award reads,
For his outstanding contributions to the research and development of electric propulsion and his tireless education of the next generation electric propulsion engineers.
Since its establishment in 2005, only 20 individuals have been awarded the Stuhlinger Medal, and Prof. Martínez-Sánchez is only the 10th recipient representing the United States. We congratulate Prof. Martínez-Sánchez for this well-deserved honor and thank him for his decades of mentorship and innovation. Read Prof. Martínez-Sánchez’s bio below.
Prof. Manuel Martínez-Sánchez graduated from the Escuela Politecnica de Madrid in June 1967, ranking first in his class in Aerospace Engineering. Following his graduation, he went to MIT on a two-year scholarship co-funded by NASA and ESRO (the predecessor of the European Space Agency, ESA), which allowed him to earn Master’s and Engineer degrees in Aeronautics and Astronautics from 1967 to 1969. Upon returning to MIT, after serving months in the University Military, he completed his doctorate between 1970 and 1973, with a Research Assistantship from the US Air Force. He then began an uninterrupted academic career at MIT.
His research activity has covered a wide range of topics in the aeronautical field, early in his career, and space, particularly in the field of propulsion.
His research in the aeronautical field covers magnetohydrodynamic generators, gas turbines, wind turbines, and combustion. In MHD generators, his contribution to the theoretical and experimental study of arc formation between electrodes and several other effects, such as non-uniformity, stands out. In the highly competitive field of Turbomachinery, he contributed to the Alford Force theory of rotor-dynamic instabilities in turbines and compressors, earning him the prestigious Melville Medal in 2003 and two other awards from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. In wind turbines, Martínez Sánchez contributed to the theory of their aerodynamics, speed and pitch control to reduce vibrations, and the effects of grid connection. He also contributed to fundamental work towards achieving lean-burn combustion stabilization using ultrafast high-voltage plasma pulses. His space research encompasses space tethers, multiple propulsion systems, and orbital dynamics. In the latter field, he studied the optimization of low-thrust trajectories.
Manuel has made pioneering contributions to many types of plasma engines: resistojets, electric arc, magnetoplasmadynamic, Hall Effect, and colloidal.
In Hall effect motors, Manuel has made fundamental contributions. Research on these engines had been suspended in the U.S. in 1970, but in the USSR it had continued to the point of their use in flight. In 1992, coinciding with a period of exceptional openness of Russian science and technology to the rest of the world, Martínez Sánchez promoted a seminar at MIT between Russian Hall engine experts from the Fakel company and the Moscow Aviation Institute, and engineers from NASA, the Air Force, and the Russian Air Force. This event catalyzed the resurgence of Hall Effects thruster research in the U.S.
Manuel did a similar thing for colloid propulsion when, in the late 1990’s, he organized a workshop at MIT to review the state of this technology, which was explored in the 1970’s but abandoned because of its technical difficulties. The workshop included researchers in academia and government, and also experts in electrospray mass spectrometry, such as Nobel Laureate John Fenn. The workshop was a success and reinvigorated work that eventually led to the field of electrospray propulsion as it is known today.