SLO County rocket scientist to receive Great Britain’s highest honor short of knighthood
A San Luis Obispo County rocket scientist who worked at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory for more than four decades will receive Great Britain’s highest civilian honor short of knighthood.
Astrophysicist Tony Freeman, a British expat who retired to Cambria in April, learned of his “Commander of the Order of the British Empire” award on New Year’s Day.
He will travel back to the United Kingdom sometime this year or next to formerly receive the honor from King Charles.
That rank is one step below knighthood, according to the website for The Gazette, the empire’s official journal of record.
Freeman is one of two recipients included on the king’s overseas and international “2025 New Year’s Honours” list, the British counsel general in Los Angeles told him.
“I was absolutely bowled over, just thrilled,” the rocket scientist told The Tribune. “I was not expecting it.”
Freeman got a notification letter later from the Order of the British Empire’s Central Chancery of the Orders of Knighthood. The award notice read that the honor was “for services to U.K./U.S. relations in space and earth science.”
The medal is a silver-gilt cross with blue enameled arms, featuring a central gold medallion depicting a crowned image of King George V. It’s typically worn on a red ribbon.
Exactly when and where the formal ceremony will take place depends on the king’s health and location, the 66-year-old Freeman said.
The delay is due to the king’s cancer diagnosis and treatments, he said, which have caused a backlog of those kinds of ceremonies and others.
“It will happen at a castle or palace,” Freeman said from his Cambria home. “We just don’t know yet which one.”
His satellite, radar and other accomplishments led to the honor
Freeman spent his career working at the forefront of space exploration, mapping and more.
The radar scientist and engineer worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.
“I spent the last 25 years coming up with new space missions ... rocket science if you will,” Freeman said by phone.
When he began building his career about 40 years ago, NASA was developing the space shuttle and launching missions to study the Earth and explore space. Among the familiar project names of the time were the space shuttles Columbia, Challenger and Discovery. The first two are remembered now primarily for the fatal tragedies that befell the shuttles and their crews.
It was an exciting time to join the effort, he said.
“During my 42-year career I enjoyed opportunities … to do what no one has been able to do before,” Freeman wrote in his scientifically dense, 2,700-word resume.
As Caltech describes the science, “Shaping the future of space exploration through architecting at this level is a heady exercise — especially at this time of rapid change in the space business.”
Freeman’s assignments meant he had to strategically develop new, start-of-the-art projects, helping to transform his science for the future.
“In my job, you had to plan long-term,” he said. It often took a decade or more to maneuver a project from concept to launching a satellite, project or new technique.
Among Freeman’s most prized accomplishments, he said, was his work on the upcoming launch of the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) satellite, using what he described as “probably the most powerful radar.”
Business-Standard defines NISAR as “the world’s most advanced and expensive earth-observation satellite … jointly developed by India and the U.S.”
It’s expected to finally launch as soon as March.
Freeman also mentioned his pride about SweepSAR, “a technique I named after our late, beloved family dog, Sweep,” he said with a chuckle. “SweepSAR is the technique that makes the NISAR mission work.”
Using cutting-edge radar technology that he helped to develop, Freeman also mapped Cambodia, the Amazon and Belize.
Among his other career highlights, he said, were his time as a planning leader in three innovative programs: Earth science, the Innovation Foundry as a champion for JPL’s SmallSat missions, and most recently as the planning lead for planetary science.
When he retired, according to a biography on the Caltech website, Freeman was JPL’s most senior formulation leader, with “a proven track record of success in building programs consisting of directed and competed NASA missions.”
What’s retirement like for the new commander of the realm?
After Tony Freeman retired from JPL, he and wife Phyllis, an elementary school teacher, left Pasadena in 2024 for the Cambria home they’d bought three years ago.
The couple met in high school in England and have been married for 45 years.
“I am still quite active in space science,” Tony Freeman said. “Since retiring, I’ve been busy writing papers, attending conferences, teaching a little and working as a consultant.”
Of the Freemans’ newfound leisure time, he said, “Phyllis and I like to travel and went to Europe four times last year.” On one of those trips, they even sailed back on the Queen Mary II.
His said his hobbies include “reading — especially science fiction — TV, watching live music, keeping my MGB (sports car) on the road, going to the vineyards all around us and walking our dog,” another goldendoodle, just like Sweep.
