Nathan Vassberg

Nathan Vassberg is the acting chief of NASA’s Office of Safety and Mission Assurance (OSMA), appointed to this role in December 2025. He is responsible for policy and oversight of all Safety and Mission Assurance (SMA) activities across the agency’s centers and programs.

Previously, Vassberg served as the Moon to Mars (M2M) SMA director since 2024, responsible for overall integrated SMA of the six M2M programs. He was also the deputy director of SMA at Johnson Space Center in Houston from 2021 to 2023 and the Chief SMA Officer for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program from 2014 to 2021. Prior to that, he chaired the Commercial Crew Program’s Safety Technical Review Board.

Vassberg’s NASA career began at Johnson in 1995 as International Space Station (ISS) safety lead and international partner liaison. In 2000, he was selected as chairman of the Safety Review Panel. He was responsible for integrating overall safety programs for the ISS, including optimizing safety to minimize risk. Vassberg served as the ISS Safety Review Panel chair for 15 years, including as the ISS Payload Safety Review Panel chair for the final five of those years. He worked as ISS safety manager from 2012 to 2013.

As Chief SMA Officer for Commercial Crew, Vassberg implemented a revolutionary, new risk-based surveillance approach that reduced the overall surveillance budget by 60% without compromising effectiveness. As the first chair of the Commercial Crew Safety Technical Review Board, Vassberg was responsible for developing the processes, framework and schedule for the board that reviewed and approved the safety products for the Commercial Crew Program and developed the strategic plan to implement a formal safety process for the program.