Tommaso Sgobba, M.S.

Tommaso Sgobba, M.S. is President and cofounder of the IAASS (International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety), which gathers the top space safety experts worldwide. He is also Vice President of the US-based International Space Safety Foundation (ISSF).
 
Tommaso is responsible for flight safety at the European Space Agency, including human-rated systems, spacecraft re-entries, space debris, use of nuclear power sources, and planetary protection. He joined the European Space Agency in 1989, after 13 years in the aeronautical industry. Initially he supported the developments of the Ariane 5 launcher, several earth observation and meteorological satellites, and the early phase of the Hermes spaceplane. Later he became product assurance and safety manager for all European manned missions on Shuttle, MIR station, and for the European research facilities for the International Space Station.
 
During his long and close cooperation with the NASA Shuttle/ISS Payload Safety Review Panel, he developed at ESA the safety technical and organizational capabilities that eventually led in 2002 to the establishment of the first ESA formal safety review panel and first International Partner ISS Payload Safety Review Panel. He was also instrumental in setting up the ESA ATV Re-entry Safety Panel and to organize the first ESA scientific observation campaign of a destructively re-entering spacecraft (Jules Verne ATV).
 
Tommaso earned his M.S. in Aeronautical Engineering from the Polytechnic of Turin (Italy), where he was Professor of Space System Safety (1999–2001).
 
He has published several articles and papers on space safety, and coedited with two NASA colleagues the textbook Safety Design for Space Systems published in 2009 by Elsevier, which is the first of its kind worldwide. He also coedited the book The Need for an Integrated Regulatory Regime for Aviation and Space published by Springer in 2011
 
Tommaso received the NASA recognition for outstanding contribution to the International Space Station in 2004, and the prestigious NASA Space Flight Awareness (SFA) Award in 2007.
 
Read Space Debris May be Catastrophic to Future Missions (and Google Earth is Watching…), Toward an International Space Station Authority?, and A Safety Centered Approach for the On-orbit Maintenance of ISS Payloads.