Rob Landis is currently on loan from Ames to NASA Headquarters as a program officer to the Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO). He has had a varied mission operations career on several NASA missions including the Hubble Space Telescope, the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer, the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn and Titan, the Mars Exploration Rovers (Spirit and Opportunity), the International Space Station (ISS) and many others. Prior to his recent return to PDCO, Landis was the program manager for the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA).
Main-belt asteroid ‘8136 Landis’ (provisional designation 1979 MH2, discovered by Bobby Bus and Glo Helin) is named in his honor.