Philip Baldwin has been at NASA for more than 17 years, the last 12 as a civil servant following five years of contract work.
As Operations Manager (Currently on Detail as the Assistant Deputy Associate Administrator 1 Jan 2023) for NASA Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) Program at NASA Headquarters, Philip Baldwin ensures that NASA’s science and exploration goals are met through its two communications networks: the Deep Space Network (DSN), which enables communication and data sharing with distant spacecraft like Mars Perseverance and Voyager 2; and the Near Space Network (NSN), which shares voice and video with crews aboard the International Space Station (ISS) as well as the downloading and worldwide distribution of scientific data from Earth-observing satellites.
At NASA Goddard, Philip served as a Mission Manager for the Technology Enterprise and Mission Pathfinder Office (TEMPO) in the Exploration & Space Communications Projects Division. His work focused on advancing new technologies and their rapid adoption operationally. Baldwin’s portfolio included electronically steered antenna arrays, Delay Tolerant Networking (DTN), and advanced navigation technologies. Previously, Baldwin served as Chief Engineer for the Near-Earth Network (NEN, now part of the NSN), leading its technical and engineering teams in developing innovative solutions and ensuring engineering best practices are followed as its independent technical authority. Prior to joining the NEN team, Baldwin worked in the Formation Flying Testbed (FFTB), which developed mission concepts for multi-spacecraft missions. This work contributed to the successful record-breaking Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission using GPS for navigation and formation flying. His validation of this new GPS system allows for missions to use GPS navigation halfway to the moon.
Baldwin earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Virginia. During his undergraduate studies, he worked as a software contributor to UC Berkley’s Center for Hybrid and Embedded Software Systems (CHESS). Philip’s co-creation of a wireless sensor package was included in Baldwin’s undergraduate thesis, “Modeling of Wireless Sensor networks in Ptolemy II,” has been published in numerous journals and books, and incorporated into undergraduate course study of wireless sensor networks by several institutions of higher learning.