Meteoroid Environment

Alfredo Colón 

Meteoroid Environment Program Executive

Alfredo Colón is the Micrometeoroid and Orbital Debris (MMOD) program executive, the Human Rating discipline manager, and the policy and requirements manager for the Office of Safety and Mission Assurance (OSMA).

As the program executive for MMOD, Colón is responsible for overseeing the Orbital Debris Program Office and the Meteoroid Environment Office. He oversees program execution of NASA’s requirements for limiting Orbital Debris and the U.S. Government Orbital Debris Mitigation Standard Practices. He is responsible for reviewing the Orbital Debris assessments and end-of-mission plans submitted by spaceflight programs and projects for quality and compliance and for reviewing requests for relief from orbital debris mitigation requirements. 

As the Human Rating document manager for NASA, he is responsible for the development and quality of NPR 8705.2, Human-Rating Requirements for Space Systems. At NASA, Colón has peer reviewed risk assessments of human space systems. 

As policy and requirements manager for OSMA, Colón leads process improvement and an ongoing efforts to improve the clarity, consistency and relevancy of agency safety and mission assurance directives and standards. Colón represents OSMA on the NASA Engineering Standards Panel and is NASA's representative on the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Interagency Committee on Standards Policy Conformity Assessment Working Group.

Before joining NASA, he lead technical risk assessments for NASA, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and industry of Air Traffic Management concepts and aerospace vehicles. Colón assessed the impact of new aircraft concepts on the safety of the air transportation system and constraints placed on aircraft operations by the system and assessed the technical risk of multiple crewed space vehicles (Orbital Space Plane, Crew Rescue Vehicle, Crew Transfer Vehicle), launch vehicles and the International Space Station. As a contractor, Colón also represented the FAA Air Traffic Organization on the multi-agency Joint Planning and Development Office's Safety Working Group and on the FAA/EUROCONTROL Joint Safety Action Plan. 

Colón also designed and analyzed advanced aircraft and marine vehicles for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and industry and served as an expert member on the Applied Vehicle Technology Panel of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s Research and Technology Agency in support of the Wingship Technical Group. Colón has a Bachelor of Science degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

William Cooke

Meteoroid Environment Program Manager

William “Bill” J. Cooke Jr. is the lead of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office and is located at Marshall Space Flight Center. In this role, he is responsible for generating risk assessments of meteoroid environments for spacecraft and crew, and rebuilding the U.S.’s meteoroid expertise that was lost during the 1970s and 1980s when the Apollo program came to an end. In addition, he generates meteor shower forecasts for spacecraft operations on behalf of the agency.

Cooke was a primary coordinator of the NASA and Department of Defense’s response to the Leonid meteor storms of 1999, 2001 and 2002. He also established NASA’s All Sky Fireball Network — a network of cameras designed to observe meteors known as fireballs.

Prior to joining NASA, Cooke was an analyst for the Long Duration Exposure Facility Interplanetary Dust Experiment, STS-3 Shuttle Induced Atmosphere Experiment, and Orbital Debris and Meteoroid Counter on the third stage of the Clementine mission to the moon. He calibrated the Optical Probe Experiment onboard the European Space Agency’s Giotto mission to Halley’s Comet and developed a pointing algorithm for the balloon-borne Gamma Ray Advanced Detector.

Cooke has a Bachelor of Science degree in physics and astronomy from Valdosta State College and a Doctorate of Philosophy in astronomy from the University of Florida. He is a member of the International Meteor Organization. Throughout his career, he has earned the Exceptional Service Medal, Silver Snoopy Award and Director’s Commendation Award.

Cooke has been an avid model rocketeer since 1968 and is very active in promoting hobby rocketry at local schools and organizations. On May 24, 2005, main belt asteroid 15058 was named Billcooke in honor of Cooke’s contributions to the field of meteors.