John Loiacono
Spaecraft Mission Director
Goddard Space Flight Center

Mr. Loiacono joined the Aura Project and the Flight Project's Directorate (Code 400) in 1998 as the Aura Project's Instrument Systems Manager, and was promoted to his present job as the Aura Deputy Project Manager/Chief Engineer in 2000. Since Mr. Loiacono's arrival to NASA/GSFC in 1984, he has worked as part of engineering teams in the development and launch of instrumentation for Space and Earth Sciences Missions. Most of his employment at NASA has been spent in the Earth Sciences Directorate (Code 900), Laboratory for Atmospheres, and the Space Sciences Directorate (Code 600), Laboratory for Astronomy and Solar Physics.

Mr. Loiacono's tenure in the Earth Sciences Directorate began as project engineer for developing the Galileo Probe Neutral Mass Spectrometer that measured the composition of Jupiter's atmosphere in 1997, and the Cassini/Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer instrument that will orbit Saturn and measure its extended atmosphere in 2004.

In 1989, Mr. Loiacono led the development and integration of the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) instrument to continue the measurement of Ozone in the Earth's Stratosphere and Ozone depletion at the earth's poles. He played a key role in leading the TOMS instrument development and the technical team in integrating the TOMS instrument on the Russian Meteor-3 Spacecraft, and launching it from Plesetsk Kosmodrome, USSR in 1991. Following this mission, NASA sent Mr. Loiacono to California to work in-plant on developing TOMS instruments that would later be launched on the Earth Probe Spacecraft and Japanese ADEOS Spacecraft. He led the TOMS's technical team to Japan for the TOMS engineering model integration onto the ADEOS Spacecraft.

In 1993, Mr. Loiacono left the Earth Sciences Directorate and was hired into the Space Sciences Directorate as the Deputy Experiment Manager for the Hubble Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (HST/STIS) in the Laboratory for Astronomy and Solar Physics. STIS was installed into the Hubble Space Telescope in 1997, and amongst its findings has been the discovery of numerous Black Holes.

Following the HST/STIS launch in 1997, and prior to his arrival on the Aura Mission, the NASA/GSFC Systems, Technology, and Advanced Concepts Directorate (Code 700) hired Mr. Loiacono as the Senior Systems Engineer for the development of the Advanced Land Imager (ALI) on the Earth Orbiter-1 Spacecraft.

Mr. Loiacono received his Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from The Catholic University of America (1980-84), attended University of Maryland for Masters in Electrical Engineering (1986-88) and George Washington University for Masters in Engineering Management (1992). Mr. Loiacono was selected into the very first technical class of the NASA/GSFC Program Management Development Emprise (PMDE) program in 1990. He was awarded NASA's Exceptional Achievement Medal in recognition of his technical leadership and engineering excellence in the design, development and launch of the Meteor-3/TOMS mission, and the Civil Service Excellence Award for his role in the development of the HST/STIS instrument. He was instrumental in founding a successful software and electrical engineering company. Prior to arriving at NASA/GSFC, Mr. Loiacono was employed by The National Institutes of Health in the development of high resolution Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging equipment and techniques, now called Magnetic Resonance Imaging.