Harry Cikanek is a non-teaching adjunct research professor at the City University of New York Remote Sensing Earth System Institute. He also serves as an independent consultant to organizations addressing space systems, and space based environmental enterprises and programs. He held senior executive positions in NOAA and NASA for a combined 16 years before retiring. These responsibilities included leading NOAA’s satellite remote sensing science, and the US polar orbiting weather satellite program. In NASA he led engineering and programs in human and robotic spaceflight including rocket engines, launch vehicles, spacecraft, experiments, and advanced technologies. He has worked with a wide range of companies from small entrepreneurial firms to the largest and within a variety of frameworks from partnerships and cooperative agreements to contracts.