Breaking Boundaries: Meet NASA’s Nathan Vassberg, Keynote Speaker at Our Annual Summit! The Safety Society is thrilled to welcome Nathan Vassberg to the 2024 event!
Moon to Mars Safety and Mission Assurance Director, NASA Nathan Vassberg is the NASA Moon to Mars Safety and Mission Assurance Director. He leads a team of SMA experts integrating the Safety and Mission Assurance team that will return humans to the lunar surface and advance toward Mars missions. He integrates 6 NASA Programs with 11 Prime contractors and International Partners from across the world.
Nathan’s NASA career began at Johnson in 1995 as International Space Station Safety Lead and International Partner Liaison. While in that role, Nathan worked with Russian Space Agency, European Space Agency, Japanese Space Agency and Canadian Space Agency to integrate and safely build the International Space Station. In 2000 he was selected as chairman of the Safety Review Panel. He was responsible for integrating overall safety programs for the International Space Station, including optimizing safety to minimize risk, and making informed risk decisions when safety requirements were waived Nathan served in progressively more responsible positions since then, including serving as the ISS Safety Review Panel Chair for 15 years, and additionally serving as the ISS Payload Safety Review Panel Chair for the final 5 of those years.
In 2014, Nathan became Chief SMA Officer for Commercial Crew, implemented a revolutionary new risk-based surveillance approach that reduced the overall surveillance budget by 60% without compromising effectiveness.As the first Chair of the Commercial Crew Safety Technical Review Board, Nathan was responsible for developing the processes, framework, and schedule for the board that reviews and approves the safety products for the Commercial Crew Program, and developed the strategic plan to implement a formal safety process for the Program. In this role, he worked closely with SpaceX and Boeing to develop the first human rated commercial space vehicles and oversaw the safety of the first SpaceX Dragon Crewed flight in 2020.
In 2021, Nathan became the Johnson Space Center’s Deputy Director of Safety & Mission Assurance (SMA), leading a team of 500 experts in safety, risk management and quality assurance to ensure safe human space flight for the world. He worked to build a strong organizational culture yielding vast benefits in the broadening safety culture at Johnson Space Center and amplifying the effectiveness of his team.
In 1991, Nathan graduated from the University of Texas at Austin,earning a bachelor’s degree in aerospace, aeronautical and astronautical engineering.
Join us for Nathan’s captivating presentation, alongside other thrilling must-see sessions! Registration and Sponsorship opportunities going live soon, watch your emails next week for more information!