Space Environments and NASA's Engineering and Safety Center

NASA recently established a new Technical Fellow for Space Environments position with responsibilities for providing NASA with expertise on the full range of space environments encountered by spacecraft operating in near Earth and interplanetary space. Technical Fellows are members of the NASA Engineering and Safety Center (NESC) and provide Agency-wide leadership for their respective disciplines in support of the Office of the Chief Engineer. The Technical Fellow and his technical discipline team of space environment experts will utilize NESC resources to pursue an applications oriented approach to space environments and effects, characterizing space environments that are relevant to engineering design of spacecraft, space weather impact on spacecraft operations, and spacecraft anomaly and failure investigations. This presentation describes the Technical Fellow for Space Environments team roles, responsibilities, and activities of interest to the space weather community including (a) an assessment of the space environments discipline to determine readiness to support current and future NASA missions, (b) identifying technology gaps and areas for potential NASA investment to improve the space environments and effects discipline, (c) sponsoring and conducting discipline enhancement activities (environment model and effects tools, new data sets, environments testing), (d) independent investigations of space environment issues for NASA programs, and (e) relationship and coordination of NESC space environments activities with existing space weather programs in NASA and other Federal agencies.