NASA Names Emily Nelson New Chief Flight Director at Johnson Area Middle in Houston

(NASA) – NASA has named Emily Nelson its new chief flight director, main the group that directs human spaceflight missions from the Mission Management Middle on the company’s Johnson Area Middle in Houston.

Norm Knight, the company’s director of flight operations, chosen Nelson to switch Holly Ridings, who held the place from 2018 to 2022, and now helps lead the company’s Gateway Program, a global partnership to determine humanity’s first house station orbiting the Moon.

Nelson has been the performing chief flight director since Using’s departure.

“Being a flight director is about accepting nice accountability and exercising glorious management and judgment – accountability for the mission, on your group, and for the astronauts we fly,” Knight mentioned. “Emily’s tenure main our flight management groups has confirmed that she is remarkably educated on the realities of human spaceflight and eminently composed when dealing with daunting challenges. She is unequivocally the fitting individual to steer our flight director workplace as we endeavor to push the boundaries of human spaceflight exploration.”

On this function, Nelson manages 31 lively flight administrators and flight directors-in-training who oversee a wide range of human spaceflight missions involving the Worldwide Area Station, together with integrating American-made industrial crew spacecraft into the fleet of spacecraft servicing the orbiting laboratory, in addition to Artemis missions to the Moon.

“We’re thrilled to announce Emily as chief battle director as her program and operations expertise will proceed to make sure the protected and profitable completion of each mission as we put together to transition to a commercialized low Earth orbit the place NASA might be a buyer of many,” mentioned NASA Johnson Director Vanessa Wyche. “Emily’s dedication to mission excellence makes her the perfect selection to steer the groups that may ship our astronauts across the Moon on Artemis II, and as we put together for operations on the lunar floor by way of the Artemis marketing campaign that may land the primary lady and individual of colour on the Moon.”

Nelson, born in Okinawa, Japan, and raised in Austin, Texas, earned a Bachelor of Science diploma in mechanical engineering from the College of Texas at Austin in 1998. She joined NASA in 1998 as a flight controller within the house station’s thermal operations group.

She was chosen as a flight director in 2007, changing into the seventieth flight director in NASA’s historical past.

Since then, she has served because the lead flight director for a number of missions together with the station’s fourth utilization and logistics flight with the house shuttle, Atlantis, in 2010, a posh collection of spacewalks to restore the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, and 5 house station long-duration expeditions.

She beforehand served as deputy chief flight director whereas persevering with to assist real-time operations from mission management.