David W. Affens, Mission Manager

Mr. Affens is the Search and Rescue Mission Manager at NASA's GSFC. His organization is responsible for applying aerospace technology to the needs of the search and rescue community. He began working at NASA Goddard in 1990. Prior to coming to NASA, he worked for 21 years in various aspects of submarine warfare. He began work as a Weapons System Digital Design Engineer at the Naval Ordnance Laboratory. He later worked as a Systems Design Engineer on non-acoustic anti-submarine projects and as a Systems Analyst for the TRIDENT missile program at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. He has made contributions to a variety of technical areas, including innovative designs for computer system hardware and advanced sensor systems. He holds a degree in electronic engineering specializing in computer systems and is a member of the IEEE. Mr. Affens is presently chairman of the Technical Working Group of the international COSPAS-SARSAT Joint Committee, chairman of the U.S. System Evolution Working Group, and chairman of the National Search and Rescue Committee R&D Working Group. Mr. Affens is presently sponsoring a state-of-the-art advancement to global satellite-aided search and rescue to be carried on the next generation of GPS satellites called the Distress Alerting Satellite System or DASS.

James W. Christo, Ground System Manager

Mr. Christo rejoined the search and rescue program in the fall of 1998 as the ground systems manager. He manages the System Evaluation and Development Laboratory (SEDL) and provides support to the Polar Operational Environmental Satellite (POES) and Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) projects. In the mid 1970's, he participated in the ATS-5/6 Position Location and Aircraft Communication Experiments (PLACE) experiments and the first field experiments that showed the feasibility of a satellite based search and rescue system. After that, he worked for the Navy in the Naval Air Systems Command and Office of Naval Research. In 1980 he joined GSFC's Network Compatibility Testing activity, an area he worked for 18 years of which 10 years as the manager. His function was to conduct system level tests to show radio frequency compatibility between spacecraft being built and NASA's tracking stations, including TDRSS. Most notable was his work on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), where he was the leader of a government/contractor team that provided support to the project. Accomplishments included: building of a special van for support of the project, performing project RF testing, conducting network compatibility testing, providing launch support and managing the development of the programmable data formatter, a precursor to the modern day programmable telemetry processor. Mr. Christo holds a BS degree in electrical engineering and a MS degree in applied physics.

Armen Caroglanian, Ground Station Technical Consultant

Armen Caroglanian is a Senior Electronics Engineer in the Microwave and Communication Systems Branch at NASA's GSFC . In his role as SAR DASS Technical Consultant, he has provided satellite ground station expertise in the development of the DASS Ground Station. His contributions include participating in writing the DASS Ground Station Antenna and Processing System specifications, and evaluating the proposals. Mr. Caroglanian worked closely with GSFC contractors and the DASS antenna vendor in the procurement, installation, and test, of the DASS Ground Station Antenna System. In support of the DASS project, Mr. Caroglanian led a Multi-Beam Ground Station Phased Array study with the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

Over the last 20 years, Mr. Caroglanian has been involved in the development, procurement, installation, and testing of numerous NASA ground stations. Projects highlights include the Second TDRSS Ground Terminal (STGT) antennas, Gamma Ray Observatory (GRO) Remote Terminal, Landsat-7 Ground Station, and support to the MILA Kennedy Space Center (KSC) Ground Station. Mr. Caroglanian holds a BS and MS degree in electrical engineering from the University of Maryland.

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