Hasan Receives NASA Space Flight Awareness Silver Snoopy Award

Department of Aerospace Engineering graduate student Syed Hasan recently received NASA's Space Flight Awareness (SFA) Silver Snoopy Award. According to NASA, the SFA Silver Snoopy Award is the "astronauts' personal award" granted to individuals who make outstanding contributions related towards human flight safety or toward enhancing mission success.

Anna Lee Fisher and Hasan Syed

Astronaut Anna Lee Fisher (left) was on hand to present Hasan (right) the Silver Snoopy during an award ceremony held at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Hasan currently works for Honeywell and serves as the Lead Collision Avoidance Engineer for the Earth Observing System missions (Terra, Aqua and Aura) at NASA Goddard. He was nominated for the Silver Snoop for his dedication, commitment and outstanding support to the Space Flight program while working in the Flight Dynamics Facility as the Human Space Flight lead.

According to a Honeywell news story, Hasan played a major role in the success of the early SpaceX Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) Demo Flights. He developed a process improvement in tracking the unmanned SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft during re-entry which created a more efficient way to process SpaceX-provided trajectory data. In turn, this yielded better tracking and communication with the spacecraft on re-entry. Post mission, SpaceX reported highly improved tracking results and expressed their pleasure with the performance of the new support method.

NASA has previously recognized Hasan's outstanding work. In 2008, he received both the SFA Honoree Award, one of the highest awards presented to NASA and industry for first-level management, and the Space Flight Awareness Team Award.

Hasan is working towards completing his Ph.D. in the field of Space Systems under the advisement of Associate Professor David Akin. He completed both his M.S. ('10) and B.S. ('04) at Maryland.

The NASA Silver Snoopy award consists of a silver “Snoopy” lapel pin flown during a NASA mission, a commendation letter and a signed certificate. Hasan's pin flew aboard a 2006 Space Shuttle Mission to the International Space Station.

Published December 16, 2015