The last decade has unleashed upheavals across the space industry. New actors, leaps in technology, innovative business models, unanticipated applications, rapidly evolving priorities and the democratization of space have abolished the status quo and the new normal has yet to settle in. One element has not changed — the demand for mission success and generating the projected return on invested capital, time, and intellectual property. That being said, what can organizations do to assure mission success is experienced? Agile mission assurance maintains pace with accelerating developments in hardware, software, architectures, missions and budgets. This panel will discuss successful tactics that diverge from heritage approaches and delve into the strategies that are efficient, effective and responsive to the challenges of today and those in the future.
Lon Levin
Lon Levin is the President and Chief Executive Officer of GEOshare, a separate subsidiary of Lockheed Martin that develops condosats and provides value-added satellite services. He is an executive and entrepreneur in the telecommunications, new media, and aerospace industries for more than 30 years.
Lon co-founded XM Satellite Radio and played an integral executive role in the formation and development of other media, satellite, and wireless companies, including Mobile Satellite Ventures, XM Canada, Slacker Radio, American Mobile Satellite Corporation, and TerreStar Networks.
Prior to his corporate career, Lon was a partner in a law firm, specializing in satellite telecommunications. He started his career as an attorney at the Federal Communications Commission. Lon served as a U.S. Delegate negotiating technology treaties at many International Telecommunication Union conferences. Lon holds five telecommunication satellite patents.
Lon serves on the Board of Directors for the Space Foundation (Chairman (2014-15) and Executive Committee member) and Planetary Society (Treasurer), and the Board of Governors of the National Space Society. He is a member of the Human Exploration and Operations Committee of the NASA Advisory Council. He was a member of the Defense Business Board of the U.S. Department of Defense (2008-18) and is a founding board member of the Satellite Industry Association, which he co-chaired from 1996 to 1998.
Michael Johnson
Michael Johnson is Chief Technologist of the Engineering and Technology Directorate (ETD) at NASA/ Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). He engages persons within and beyond GSFC to envision futures with visionary, challenging, and compelling spaceflight missions and measurements and then leads or influences teams to expand the possibility to make these visions a reality.
Before assuming the ETD Chief Technologist position, Mr. Johnson was the Assistant Chief for Technology in Goddard’s Electrical Engineering Division. In this role, he facilitated the development of mission-enabling and -enhancing electrical engineering-related technologies.
Michael’s background in developing numerous spaceflight subsystems, from concept definition, through flight operations, prepared him for these technology management positions. His roles at GSFC—first as a Principal Engineer at Hughes/STX, then as a Lead Electrical Engineer in Goddard’s Laboratory for Extraterrestrial Physics and in the Microelectronics and Signal Processing Branch—led to the successful space deployment of several science instruments, including Cassini/CAPS, and IMAGE/LENA.
Before coming to Goddard, Mr. Johnson was employed as a Staff Engineer at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Lincoln Laboratory for nearly ten years, responsible for the design, development, and management of advanced ground- and space-based systems.
Michael received his Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Master of Science in Electrical Engineering, and Degree of Electrical Engineer from MIT.
James Loman
James Loman is Senior Distinguished Engineer on SSL Flight Assurance, where he is responsible for flight assurance activities with a specialty of Reliability, Radiation Effects, Parts, Materials and Processes, and Failure Review Boards. SSL is the leading provider of geostationary commercial satellites, with experience building and integrating the world’s most powerful and complex satellites and spacecraft systems. SSL has a long history of delivering reliable satellites and spacecraft systems for commercial and government customers around the world and currently have more geostationary commercial capacity on orbit than any other manufacturer. SSL is currently building the World View Legion constellation and other LEO satellites.
Dr. Loman’s career has spanned 40 years, of which 15 have been at SSL. Previously at SSL, he was Executive Director for Engineering Technologies. Prior to this, he spent 23 years with GE in various roles. He was Engineering Leader at GE Energy for Solar Technology; responsible for R&D, New Product Introduction and Manufacturing support for solar cells, solar panels and grid-tie inverters. Prior to this, he headed the Advanced Photonics and Electronics Laboratory at the GE Global Research Center and was instrumental in developing innovative new products for Aerospace, Industrial, Medical, Power and Consumer Applications. Dr. Loman’s earlier career includes being Specialty Engineering Manager and Principle Engineer for the commercial space business in East Windsor NJ, responsible for EMI/EMC, Radiation Effects, Parts, Materials and Processes, Reliability and Safety. Dr. Loman’s career began in the Physics Department at Brookhaven National Laboratory within his educational specialty of Condensed Matter Physics.
Dr. Loman received his PhD. from the University of Delaware, his M.S. Degree from the University of Notre Dame, and his B.S. from Villanova University, all in Physics. He was certified as a Six Sigma Master Black Belt and also as a Certified Reliability Engineer.
Katharine Losoncy
Katharine Losoncy is a Mission Assurance Manager in Northrop Grumman Corporation’s Innovation Systems Sector. She is responsible for spacecraft product line mission assurance, specialty engineering, and additive manufacturing standards.
Losoncy has 20+ years of experience in systems engineering development, program management, and integration and test in space, launch, and automotive systems.
Prior to joining Northrop Grumman, Losoncy held senior engineering and management positions at The Aerospace Corporation, SpaceX and Robert Bosch Corporation.
Losoncy holds a B.S. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Cornell University. She is a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) where she is a committee member for the ASME y14.46 Product Definition Practices for Additive Manufacturing.
Jeff Osterkamp
Jeff Osterkamp is the vice president of Security and Mission Assurance for Ball Aerospace. He provides leadership that guides the application of enterprise security, mission-system assurance, requirements trades, mission risk identification and analysis, and process application that ensures mission success across the company’s program portfolio.
Osterkamp has more than 33 years of leadership experience at Ball
Aerospace. Most recently, in his role as vice president of the engineering organization, he was responsible for engineering, manufacturing and test
operations, supply chain management, technology development, facilities, and resource planning. His previous roles include executive leadership of the Tactical Electro-optical Components; vice president, business execution for National Defense strategic business unit; vice president of the Program Management Office; director of Sensor and Video Technologies; and director of Advanced Antenna and Video Systems.
Prior to joining Ball Aerospace, Osterkamp was a systems engineer at Sperry Flight Systems from 1980 to 1986.
He holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Idaho and a Master of Science in Engineering Management from the University of Colorado.