Nick Pelster

nick.pelster@californiaspaceauthority.org

3201 Airpark Dr., Ste. 204
Santa Maria, CA 93455
805-349 2633, ext. 123

Nick Pelster is the Technical Director for the California Space Authority, Inc. (CSA), a non-profit corporation founded to promote and advocate the continuing development and growth of California's Space Enterprise community.

Nick has 19 years of experience in the California aerospace community. Nick began his career as a test engineer for aerospace weapons system development efforts. This experience in planning, conducting, analyzing, and reporting on component and subsystem level testing led to expansion of his career into systems engineering and integration. As a systems engineer, Nick was responsible for requirements development and traceability, technology integration, and configuration/data/risk management.

After several years in systems/test engineering, Nick led a team of professionals responsible for program planning and capability analysis to support the Air Force. In this role, he worked with defense agencies (Air Force, Army, and Navy), civil agencies, and a variety of aerospace contractors to secure new space and missile projects and develop new launch range capabilities.

Nick went on to become the director of an organization responsible for engineering sustainment and modernization projects for the Air Force space and missile launch Range instrumentation, network, and control and display systems (Eastern and Western Range). In this capacity, he managed an engineering workforce of over 200, over 55 projects, and approximately $160M budget.

Nick graduated from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, with a Bachelor of Science degree in aerospace engineering. Nick is a Value Based Six Sigma Green Belt and is a senior member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.