Contact
Judy Pettus
Media Relations Department
(256) 544-0034
judy.pettus@msfc.nasa.gov

Release: 01-204

Marshall Center engineer Jason Vaughn receives national award for outstanding federal service

Jason A. Vaughn, an engineer at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., has been named a recipient of the annual Arthur S. Flemming Award honoring outstanding men and women in the federal government.

The award, presented Tuesday at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., is given to individuals with three to 15 years of government experience who have made extraordinary contributions to the federal government. Winners are selected from all areas of federal service.

Vaughn, named a winner in the applied science category, is a materials engineer in Marshall’s Engineering Directorate. He has been instrumental in conducting laboratory research and developing technology for electrodynamic science missions and high voltage system operation in the space plasma environment. He has developed systems to simulate the space environment in the laboratory, which is critical for conducting detailed research in ground facilities.

He has conducted laboratory research on interactions of high voltage power systems and the space plasma, particularly important in the International Space Station design.

His work in electrical properties of thermal control coatings has been a key to success of electrodynamic space missions such as NASA’s Tethered Satellite System mission, the TSS-1R reflight, and the Propulsive Small Expendable Deployment System (ProSEDS) experiment, just completing development.

Vaughn’s work in developing electrically conductive thermal control coatings and plasma contactors has allowed him to go from basic laboratory research and continue the development process through to the production of the electrodynamic tether for the ProSEDS experiment.

Vaughn is a 1981 graduate of Eagle Valley High School in Eagle, Colo. He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering from Colorado State University in Fort Collins.

A Marshall Center employee since 1989, Vaughn is married to the former Sandi Mott of Wolcott, Colo. They live in Madison, Ala., and have two children, Kristina, 11, and Rachel, 8.

The Marshall Center is NASA’s premier organization for development of space transportation and propulsion systems and NASA’s leader in microgravity research and advanced large optics manufacturing technology.

Established in 1948, the Flemming award is named for Arthur Sherwood Flemming, whose career spanned seven decades of service to the federal government and higher education. His career began as a member of the U.S. Civil Service Commission in 1939. He went on to serve as president of three universities; director of the Office of Defense Mobilization; Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare; and chairman of both the U.S. Commission on Aging and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. President Bill Clinton awarded Flemming the Medal of Freedom in 1994 for his peerless dedication to his country. Flemming died in 1996.