Astronaut Anna Lee Fisher (left) presenting Syed Hasan (right) the Silver Snoopy award during a ceremony held at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. (Image courtesy of University of Maryland.)
Aerospace engineering Ph.D. student Syed Hasan recently received NASA’s Space Flight Awareness (SFA) Silver Snoopy award.
Hasan currently works for Honeywell at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center as the lead collision avoidance engineer for the Earth Observing System missions Terra, Aqua and Aura.
During his time with Honeywell, Hasan played a role in the success of early SpaceX Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program demo flights. He developed a process improvement for tracking the unmanned Dragon cargo spacecraft during re-entry.
These advancements made processing trajectory data more efficient, which in turn yielded better tracking and communication with the spacecraft during re-entry.
Hasan is currently working towards finishing his Ph.D. in the field of space systems at the University of Maryland’s A. James Clark School of Engineering.
NASA describes the SFA Silver Snoopy Award as the “astronauts’ personal award.” It is granted to individuals working at NASA to acknowledge outstanding contributions toward human flight safety or toward enhancing mission success.
The award winners must meet at least two of the award criteria:
- Significantly contributing beyond their normal work requirements.
- Performing a single specific achievement which contributed towards attaining a particular program goal.
- Contributing to one or more major cost saving/cost avoidance.
- Instrumental in developing program modifications that increase quality, reliability, safety, efficiency, or performance.
- Developing or assisting with an operational improvement that increases efficiency and performance.
- Developing a process improvement of significant magnitude.
Hasan was nominated for his dedication, commitment and outstanding support of the Space Flight program while working as the human space flight lead in the Flight Dynamics facility.
The award consists of a silver “Snoopy” lapel pin that has flown during a NASA mission, a commemoration letter and a signed certificate. Hasan’s pin flew to the International Space Station aboard a 2006 Space Shuttle mission.
The SFA program is a NASA-managed motivational and recognition program to help ensure that every employee involved in human spaceflight is aware of the importance of their role in supporting astronaut safety and mission success.
For more information on NASA’s Space Flight Awareness program, visit their website.