Overview
François Toussaint is a cofounder and chief executive of objectory, and is based in Auckland. Since March 2026 he has also headed spacecraft operations at Rocket Lab, which he joined in January 2023 as a senior spacecraft and flight dynamics operations engineer before becoming spacecraft operations lead engineer in May 2024 and then team lead and principal spacecraft operations engineer in April 2025.
He spent most of the previous decade at the Centre National d'Études Spatiales, where he worked as a mission operations ground segment engineer from February 2015 and as a specialist spacecraft and flight dynamics operations engineer from June 2018 until January 2023. Earlier he developed space flight dynamics software at Thales Belgium from October 2013, and held internships at the Centre National d'Études Spatiales in space simulation and at ArianeGroup in space system engineering.
Toussaint studied aerospace engineering at ISAE-ENSMA from 2010 to 2013, following preparatory classes in mathematics at Lycée H. Poincaré. He gives his areas of expertise as satellite systems engineering, space systems, aerospace engineering and software development.
Career history
In the news
- In the last 15 months Rocket Lab spacecraft operations global team handled the critical operations for 4 of the hardest operational scenarios with one capsule reentry mission, one interplanetary mission, one RPO mission and now on going commissioning and soon orbit raising for a constellation mission 💪 This is truly amazing and surely a first in the space industry for a single global team, so proud of the team and to have been part of this journey. This is just the beginning! Plenty more missions to come. Apply on all our
- Help us build the future of spacecraft operations at Rocket Lab 🚀 We’re growing our Spacecraft Operations team across Auckland, New Zealand | Long Beach, California | Denver, Colorado — and we’re looking for exceptional engineers ready to work on missions that are pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. We are operating spacecrafts in orbit to delivering breakthrough capabilities for commercial, scientific, and national security missions, Rocket Lab is doing the kind of work most space system engineers only dream about.
- Doing Rendezvous Proximity Operations starting from a Notice To Launch known last minute is just incredibly difficult spacecraft operations (and launch ops as well) requiring amazing hardware capacities too. Now Rocket Lab is proving what we are capable of 💪 Very proud of my team for the design and operations on going here 🤗 We are still hiring in our sites of Auckland NZ, Denver USA and Long Beach USA so apply online before it's too late 👍
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