Jenny Devolites, NASA Systems Engineer, is following her dream of making space exploration a reality.

by CDR Karen Fine Brasch, USN, Ret.

Jenny Devolites (NASA/Johnson Space Center)

“NASA to Discuss Deep Space Exploration Progress at Johnson Space Center” highlights Orion activities at NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas, on Thursday, April 26, 2018. What is Orion? “NASA’s Orion spacecraft is built to take humans farther than they’ve ever gone before. Orion will serve as the exploration vehicle that will carry the crew to space, provide emergency abort capability, sustain the crew during the space travel, and provide safe re-entry from deep space return velocities. Orion will launch on NASA’s new heavy-lift rocket, the Space Launch System.”

Before NASA can fly any crew aboard a spaceship, they need to conduct abort flight tests to demonstrate abort capability in the event of a launch emergency. That’s where Jenny Devolites and her team come in, providing the emergency abort capability integration testing and she is among the panel members presenting exploration progress at JSC this week.


Passionate about her career, her team, and her mission, Jenny has found that somewhat elusive dream in which her career and her hobby are one and the same. Unburdened by the teenage indecision of what she wanted for a career, Jenny has known from her early years that it would involve space.

Naturally gifted in math and science, Jenny grew up watching Star Trek with her family. When asked, “What made you choose the Space Program?” She replied without hesitation, “Captain Kirk.”  Last year for Christmas, she even had special bracelets made for her and her sisters in honor of their Star Trek mentor whom they credit as their inspirational childhood hero.  Simply engraved, the bracelets read,  “W. W. C. K. D.?”  (What Would Captain Kirk Do?)

A self-proclaimed nerd (and proud of it), she has loved everything about space exploration for as long as she can remember. An Aerospace Engineering graduate of Texas A&M University, Jenny reflects on growing up and that she knew she’d be in a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) field before it was even called STEM. The best day of her young life was when she got her letter from NASA inviting her to be an intern while still attending college. That was over twenty-five years ago and she loves her job today just as much as the day she received that letter.

Jenny is the Deputy Lead for building the test crew module for the Orion flight test. She casually mentioned that one of the highlights of her job is to be the Test Conductor during the flight test. For anyone watching a live rocket ship launch, what she humbly means is that she is a voice you will hear during the live countdown on launch day in Mission Control at Cape Canaveral.

After a first attempt at asking her to summarize the impact of her program, I realized that I couldn’t understand the technical terms, mathematical implications, and the physics behind her brief explanation. So, I tried again. “Can you break it down for the non-STEM readers?” I asked. Without missing a beat, she expertly, and impressively, dialed it back to layman’s terms. Simply put, she described her project to me as a safety test. “There is a rocket with a booster underneath. On top of the rocket is crew module and on top of that is the abort module. The purpose of the abort module is to be able to pull away from the crew module in case of a failed launch. It lights an abort motor that can separate the crew module from the booster within seconds.” That’s her job. That is what she gets to do every day when she goes to work. Jenny works with a team of brilliant minds, across numerous organizations, making it possible to explore space and save lives at the same time. No need for an engineering degree to understand that impact.

For the Orion abort module program, she leveraged the success she and her team had with the  Morpheus lander project. Morpheus was an in-house, NASA built, full-scale planetary lander design that used liquid oxygen-liquid (LOC) methane propulsion and automated precision landing capability. It was an un-crewed module, unlike Orion which will carry a flight crew. Morpheus was sized to carry a payload of about 500kg to land on a planetary surface. It was completely automated, and Jenny’s team completed 15 flight tests at the Kennedy Space Center shuttle landing facility.

Jenny and the Orion Ascent Abort 2 Team (NASA/Johnson Space Center)

 

Work-life balance has never been a significant struggle for Jenny. While she is quite clearly dedicated to her role in NASA’s space exploration programs, she has also has raised two honor student daughters. When not at work, she can be found reading physics books for fun, taking leadership courses, running, baking or cheering on her girls at their travel volleyball games. The challenges a lot of women face with having a family and a career don’t really resonate with her. She says, “We all have a work-life balance here; the men and the women. In her experience, wanting to spend quality time with your family is not unique to just women. All of her team members, mostly who are men, enjoy the work-life balance that NASA offers.

Jenny & Morpheus (NASA/Johnson Space Center

It’s not just the fact that her job affords her family time.  Jenny reiterates that it is a phenomenal culture for women at NASA. When she was asked recently at a leadership conference, “What’s it like being a woman in management in NASA?” She answered, “Incredible culture. I don’t know anything different.  I don’t notice that I’m a woman. Our culture doesn’t differentiate based on gender. Just experience. It’s about being able to do the job. If you like math and science, if you’re interested in space, consider boldly going where no one has gone before.”
 
When asked what advice she has for young adults seeking a career in space exploration, she answered, “I don’t have gender-specific advice, but I’m surprised there aren’t more women in this field. It’s the coolest job. If you’re interested, go for it. It’s a fantastic career.“

Jenny thrives on growth and learning. She is always seeking out new leadership techniques, better tools, and streamlined processes. She credits the ability to constantly innovate, by not just looking at new ways of doing business, but by bringing her team and the organization along.

Jenny reflects on the thrill she gets from her contribution to space exploration. “Everyone looks up in the sky every night and sees stars and planets, and we’re stuck here. And we shouldn’t be. We should be able to get off this planet and explore. That is why I work as hard as I do. That’s why the 15-year-old out there who wants to be inspired should look up and imagine being part of space exploration. Contribute to it and make it happen. Go out into the galaxy and explore.”

After all, W. W. C. K. D. ?

Dr. Ellen Ochoa: Scientist, Engineer, Inventor, Astronaut & Director of the Johnson Space Center

 

Dr. Ellen Ochoa. (Photo: NASA)

by Jess Clackum

From her seat in the machine perched in a corner of the universe rarely disturbed by any living being, Dr. Ellen Ochoa may well have let her mind wander back to the beginnings of a journey that had led her so high into the unexplored sky.  The year was 1993 and this foray into the place where gravity thinned like tissue paper and the world was dark and silent was Ochoa’s maiden voyage into space as a member of the crew on the STS-56 mission aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery. Her participation in the 9-day mission distinguished the 34-year-old as the first Hispanic woman to make it into outer space, and her days ahead held even more records to be broken and awards to be received; but, on that day the little girl who had never so much as heard of a female astronaut looked down on Earth, the place where she was born and where she now hovered above, from millions of miles. The trajectory of her life had taken her far, far above the limits of her world’s atmosphere. It was a place she would return to again and again.

Born in California in 1958, Ochoa was the middle of five siblings born to Joe, a Navy serviceman and sometime retail manager and his wife, Rosanne, a homemaker. The son of Mexican immigrants, Joe experienced his share of racial discrimination growing up; the memory of a childhood spent swimming in public pools only on the days before they were set to be cleaned because of public fear that he would “dirty” the waters stuck keenly with him. Consequently, Ellen and her siblings were pushed to assimilate completely into American society, and were even discouraged from speaking Spanish. The fact that neither of their parents possessed a college degree seemed to bolster the Ochoa children’s desire to educate themselves (Ellen’s mother Rosanne, who began steps to earn a college degree after giving birth to several children, would finally earn one 22 years later).

Without any female role models to look to in space travel, Ellen nonetheless took an interest in the field, stating that, “I can't image not wanting to go into space. But I never considered being an astronaut as an option because when I was growing up there were no female astronauts. It wasn't until the first six female astronauts were selected in 1978 that women could even think of it as a possible career path.” An exemplary student who held a particular interest in science, she graduated top of her high school class and was offered a scholarship to Stanford University but chose to attend the much closer to home San Diego State University in order to assist her then-divorced mother.

(Photo: Huffington Post)

At San Diego State, Ochoa weighed her options in considering a major. An accomplished flutist, she considered studying music but also harbored an interest in business and engineering. Her ambition toward the latter, however, was discouraged when she was told that engineering was not a “woman’s field” so she majored in physics instead. Having earned her bachelor’s degree, Ellen was encouraged by her mother to attend graduate school. She soon received a fellowship from Stanford, which unlike her former college, laid no gendered distinctions on their fields of study. It was while earning her master’s degree and doctorate in electrical engineering that a landmark event occurred, the effects of which were reverberated through Ochoa’s own life; “When the first space shuttle took off in 1981, Sally Ride flew for the first time,” Ellen would note later. “Putting all that together with my interest in space is what led me to apply (to NASA).”

It wasn’t long before Ochoa was working as a research engineer at Sandia National Laboratories, investigating optical systems for information processing. Her ambitions to join NASA were realized in 1988 when she was hired as the Chief of Intelligent Systems Technology Branch at Ames Research Center, where her responsibilities included supervising 35 scientists and engineers as they researched and developed computational systems for aerospace missions. During this time Ellen applied three times to NASA’s notoriously selective astronaut program, and her efforts finally paid off in 1990, when she was chosen as a future space explorer and moved to Johnson Space Center. Among the factors that she has credited for her selection are her love of music, which she notes made her a well-rounded candidate, and the pilot’s license that she had earned at an earlier date.

After her first groundbreaking foray into space in 1993, during which she deployed and captured a research satellite used for solar study and conducted studies on Earth’s atmosphere, climate, and environment, she would go on to embark on three more missions, including STS-66, STS-96, and STS-110. STS-96 was the first Space Shuttle to dock with the space station (and then proceed to deliver supplies to the station via a robotic arm operated by Ellen). All in all, Ochoa has spent nearly 1000 hours in orbit. Remembering her last mission into space, she fondly recalls, “We had docked in the international space center. We were looking down at the Earth, and we were watching bright green auroras, and the sun came up and it illuminated the station instantaneously. It was just an amazing visual view. It was amazing to see what we were building in space, and we had an international crew…There were a lot of amazing thoughts associated with that moment.”


In 2013, Ochoa was appointed Director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center, the second woman to ever hold the position. On her evolving career, Ochoa states, “Being an astronaut, and part of a team, is really rewarding, and now I have a different perspective. The end goal is still the same-carrying out exciting and challenging missions in space.” 

(Photo: Johnson Space Center)

In addition to her work with NASA, Ochoa is a co-inventor on three patents and author of various technical papers. She has received a series of awards including NASA's Exceptional Service Medal, Outstanding Leadership Medal, Space Flight Medals and the Presidential Distinguished Rank Award. She has also received the Harvard Foundation Science Award, Women in Aerospace Outstanding Achievement, The Hispanic Engineer Albert Baez Award for Outstanding Technical Contribution to Humanity, and is the first woman to receive the Engineer of the Year award by the Hispanic Engineer National Achievement Awards Conference. Ochoa is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, serves on several boards and chairs, and even has schools named after her! 

Having embarked on a dazzling career in an organization that in earlier days would have barred her entry, Ochoa’s thoughts on the past, present, and future of women in NASA are optimistic; “I was fortunate that women had been members of the astronaut corps for a dozen years when I joined. The astronaut corps has been about 20% women during the time I’ve been at NASA- a higher percentage than women who choose engineering or piloting as their careers but nevertheless a percentage that will hopefully grow larger as more women choose science and engineering fields. In the last 20 years we’ve seen the first woman pilot and command a Space Shuttle, and the first woman command an International Space Station expedition. There’s no job in the astronaut corps that women haven’t done and continue to do.”

Dr. Ochoa, wife and mother of two, continues to play the flute, enjoys flying, outdoor activities and spending time with her family.  She also spends time mentoring children just as her own mother did for her.  In fact, Ochoa cites her mother as the biggest influence in her life. Rosanne Ochoa began college when her daughter was just a year old, taking one class a time while struggling to raising five children as a divorced parent. It took 22 years but Rosanne earned her degree expressing that during the long educational experience, she had always remained focused on the learning. That stayed with her daughter Ellen through her studies and beyond.

These days, Ellen Ochoa hopes to inspire and encourage children in much the same way.  She emphasizes the value of hard work, determination and perseverance and encourages them to get a good education and keep focused on pursuing their goals. She says, "I tell students that the opportunities I had were a result of having a good educational background. Education is what allows you to stand out."

NASA's Ginger Kerrick: “I have no idea what is next for me, but I trustI will find myself exactly where I am supposed to be!"

Ginger Kerrick, NASA's first hispanic female Flight Director (Photo: NASA)

by Jess Clackum

A native of El Paso, Ginger Kerrick earned her bachelors and masters degrees in Physics from Texas Tech University. She began her career with NASA as an intern in 1991 and was given her first permanent assignment as Materials Research Engineer in 1994. Just over a year later she was reassigned to the Mission Operations Directorate as an instructor for the International Space Station Environmental and Life Support System where she was in charge of training development, simulator development and training conduct for crew members and flight controllers.

In 2001, Kerrick became the first non-astronaut Capsule Communicator (CapCom), a position within Flight Control that relays information from Mission Control to the crew. Four years later, Kerrick was appointed Flight Director, the first Hispanic Female Flight Director in NASA history. Kerrick is a dual-certified Flight Director meaning she has supported both Space Shuttle Operations and the International Space Station. She now serves as the division chief for the Flight Operations Directorate's Flight Integration Division. Kerrick has received a number of awards from NASA and other organizations for her outstanding work.

Read more about Ginger Kerrick, in her own words. Courtesy of NASA:

"I knew early on that when I grew up, I wanted to be an astronaut or a professional basketball player. Then one day, when I was 11 years old, tragedy struck. I watched my father die of a heart attack. My stay-at-home mom had to quickly figure out how she was going to raise me, my older brother, and my older twin sisters on her own. She got a job at my junior high school so she could keep an eye on me. My mom made it clear that without my dad around, she was not going to be able to pay for my college. She explained the concept of academic and athletic scholarships to me and kept me on the straight and narrow all the way through high school. By the time I reached my senior year, I graduated second in my class and was named El Paso Female Athlete of the Year, which meant I had a number of college offers to choose from. After much soul searching, I accepted an academic scholarship at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). I majored in physics and was a member of the women’s basketball team, until I blew out my knee shortly before the first game of the season. There went the professional basketball player dream. Good thing I had the astronaut option still going for me!

Toward the end of my freshman year I learned that NASA did not have a co-op program established with UTEP, so I contacted the Texas Tech Physics Department Chair to inquire about transferring. I explained my financial situation and my goal to become an astronaut. The Chair found a number of scholarships and two part-time jobs for me, the sum total of which would pay for everything I needed for the next year.

I started my junior year at Texas Tech in the fall of 1989 and experienced my first semester away from home. At age 19, I wasn’t quite as grown up as I thought I was. While I had a great time, I lost sight of my priorities and allowed my GPA to drop from a 4.0 at UTEP to a 2.7 after my first semester at Texas Tech. I lost a few scholarships for the second half of the year and NASA told me that there was no way I’d be able to co-op with a GPA that low; some lessons you have to learn the hard way. I spent the next year and a half getting back on track and graduated with a GPA of 3.3, still too low to be considered for NASA’s co-op program but not too low to apply for a summer internship.

In 1991, I got my first taste of working at NASA as a summer intern with the safety organization in a calibration and materials testing laboratory. With my supervisor’s assistance, I transitioned to co-op status at the end of the summer. In October 1993, 2 months before graduating with my master’s degree in physics, I received a letter from the co-op office. The President had put a hiring freeze on all government agencies. They had no idea when it would be lifted and when they could offer me a permanent position. Luckily I stayed a semester ahead in finances so I opted to stay at Texas Tech and take some business courses that next semester while I waited. I knew though that if the hiring freeze was lifted, they probably wouldn’t be able to hire everyone, so to set myself apart, I decided to call the co-op office every Friday at 1 o’clock. Eventually a position opened up and I was one of the lucky few to be hired.

(Photo: NASA)

In May 1994, I joined NASA full-time in the safety organization. After 1 year, I met the minimum requirements for applying for astronaut selection. To increase my competitiveness, I was encouraged to seek out a rotational assignment in mission operations to broaden my experience base. My boss approved a 6-month rotational assignment to the Mission Operations Directorate as an instructor for the Environmental Control and Life Support System of the yet-to-be-flown International Space Station (ISS). About 3 months into that assignment, I was notified that I had been selected for astronaut interviews. I could not have been happier! However, during the medical tests I learned I had kidney stones, a medical disqualification. Needless to say, I was devastated. After wallowing in self pity for several days, during which I contemplated giving up on NASA altogether and moving on to something else, I arrived at a new perspective – it just wasn’t meant to be. But, as an instructor for the astronauts, I could still make a contribution to the program, with each astronaut taking a little piece of me with them. That would be the closest thing to actually going myself. With that new perspective and the support of my supervisor, my rotational position to the Mission Operations Directorate (MOD) was made permanent in 1996.

Over the course of the last 14 years in MOD I have had a number of unique and very satisfying jobs. Following my experience as an ISS Life Support Systems Instructor, I created a new position, that of Russian Training Integration Instructor, to integrate training and operations products among Houston, the Gargarin Cosmonaut Training Center, and Roscosmos (the Russian space program) in support of the Expedition 1 Space Station crew. Following the successful execution of that mission in 2001, I became the first non-astronaut CapCom (Capsule Communicator), the Flight Control position that relays information from Mission Control to the crew. I served in that role for 4 years until I became a Flight Director in 2005. I am a dual-certified Flight Director, supporting both ISS and shuttle operations. I have supported 13 ISS crews and five joint shuttle missions, including lead assignments for Expedition 14 and STS-126/ULF2.

I have no idea what is next for me, but I trust I will find myself exactly where I am supposed to be!"

Meet the Rogue Women Astronauts of the 1960s Who Never Flew...

...but they passed the same tests the male astronauts did—and, yes, in high heels!

By Kat Eschner
smithsonian.com
June 16, 2017

Valentina Tereshkova was the first-ever woman to fly a spacecraft, on June 16, 1963. But even before Tereshkova took off, the United States was researching–and discarding–the idea of sending women into space, for reasons that had nothing to do with their abilities. It would take another twenty years before Sally Ride became the first American woman in space.

This is the story of the First Lady Astronaut Trainees, an elite group of women pilots who underwent astronaut testing and seemed like they might be on track to become astronauts in the early 1960s.
 
The best remembered of these women is probably Jerrie Cobb, a record-setting aviator. Even though Cobb and twelve others did extremely well in the astronaut tests, none of them went to space and the program they were part of was killed, speaking to the unwarranted sexism of the early American space program.

Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/meet-american-women-who-trained-space-1960s-180963704/#XV1PGTHP9uxPmj5r.99

Meet the Rogue Women Astronauts of the 1960s Who Never Flew

But they passed the same tests the male astronauts did—and, yes, in high heels

By Kat Eschner

smithsonian.com
June 16, 2017

Valentina Tereshkova was the first-ever woman to fly a spacecraft, on June 16, 1963. But even before Tereshkova took off, the United States was researching–and discarding–the idea of sending women into space, for reasons that had nothing to do with their abilities. It would take another twenty years before Sally Ride became the first American woman in space.

This is the story of the First Lady Astronaut Trainees, an elite group of women pilots who underwent astronaut testing and seemed like they might be on track to become astronauts in the early 1960s.  The best remembered of these women is probably Jerrie Cobb, a record-setting aviator. Even though Cobb and twelve others did extremely well in the astronaut tests, none of them went to space and the program they were part of was killed, speaking to the unwarranted sexism of the early American space program.

Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/meet-american-women-who-trained-space-1960s-180963704/#XV1PGTHP9uxPmj5r.99

"I believe that dreamers can make a difference and even change the world." - Abigail Harrison

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400.0"] Abigail Harrison (Photo: Abby Harrison) [/caption]

Abigail Harrison aspires to be a scientist and astronaut. But it doesn’t stop there–she also dreams of becoming the first astronaut to Mars. With a dreams this big, it takes setting goals and working hard each day to make them a reality. In 2011, at the age of 13, Abby began to speak publicly about her dreams. Her work over the years as an international STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, mathematics) and space ambassador has led to a following of over 700,000 people on social media.

In 2015, at the age of 18, Abby founded The Mars Generation, a 501(c)3 nonprofit with the support of an advisory board of astronauts, engineers, scientists and her hundreds of thousands of online supporters. The nonprofit has reached over 10 million people in its first year of operation and works to educate and excite kids and adults about space exploration and STEM education. The Mars Generation has 3 programs: Future of Space Outreach Program, Student Space Ambassador Leadership Program and Space Camp Scholarship Program.

Visit Abigail's website "Astronaut Abby" to read more about this extraordinary young woman!

NASA's Ginger Kerrick: “I have no idea what is next for me, but I trust I will find myself exactly where I am supposed to be!"

by Jess Clackum

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="500.0"] Ginger Kerrick, NASA's first hispanic female Flight Director. (Photo: NASA) [/caption]

A native of El Paso, Ginger Kerrick earned her bachelors and masters degrees in Physics from Texas Tech University. She began her career with NASA as an intern in 1991 and was given her first permanent assignment as Materials Research Engineer in 1994. Just over a year later she was reassigned to the Mission Operations Directorate as an instructor for the International Space Station Environmental and Life Support System where she was in charge of training development, simulator development and training conduct for crew members and flight controllers. In 2001, Kerrick became the first non-astronaut Capsule Communicator (CapCom), a position within Flight Control that relays information from Mission Control to the crew. Four years later, Kerrick was appointed Flight Director, the first Hispanic Female Flight Director in NASA history. Kerrick is a dual-certified Flight Director meaning she has supported both Space Shuttle Operations and the International Space Station. She now serves as the division chief for the Flight Operations Directorate's Flight Integration Division. Kerrick has received a number of awards from NASA and other organizations for her outstanding work.

Read more about Ginger Kerrick, in her own words. Courtesy of NASA:

I knew early on that when I grew up, I wanted to be an astronaut or a professional basketball player. Then one day, when I was 11 years old, tragedy struck. I watched my father die of a heart attack. My stay-at-home mom had to quickly figure out how she was going to raise me, my older brother, and my older twin sisters on her own. She got a job at my junior high school so she could keep an eye on me. My mom made it clear that without my dad around, she was not going to be able to pay for my college. She explained the concept of academic and athletic scholarships to me and kept me on the straight and narrow all the way through high school. By the time I reached my senior year, I graduated second in my class and was named El Paso Female Athlete of the Year, which meant I had a number of college offers to choose from. After much soul searching, I accepted an academic scholarship at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). I majored in physics and was a member of the women’s basketball team, until I blew out my knee shortly before the first game of the season. There went the professional basketball player dream. Good thing I had the astronaut option still going for me!

Toward the end of my freshman year I learned that NASA did not have a co-op program established with UTEP, so I contacted the Texas Tech Physics Department Chair to inquire about transferring. I explained my financial situation and my goal to become an astronaut. The Chair found a number of scholarships and two part-time jobs for me, the sum total of which would pay for everything I needed for the next year.

I started my junior year at Texas Tech in the fall of 1989 and experienced my first semester away from home. At age 19, I wasn’t quite as grown up as I thought I was. While I had a great time, I lost sight of my priorities and allowed my GPA to drop from a 4.0 at UTEP to a 2.7 after my first semester at Texas Tech. I lost a few scholarships for the second half of the year and NASA told me that there was no way I’d be able to co-op with a GPA that low; some lessons you have to learn the hard way. I spent the next year and a half getting back on track and graduated with a GPA of 3.3, still too low to be considered for NASA’s co-op program but not too low to apply for a summer internship.

In 1991, I got my first taste of working at NASA as a summer intern with the safety organization in a calibration and materials testing laboratory. With my supervisor’s assistance, I transitioned to co-op status at the end of the summer. In October 1993, 2 months before graduating with my master’s degree in physics, I received a letter from the co-op office. The President had put a hiring freeze on all government agencies. They had no idea when it would be lifted and when they could offer me a permanent position. Luckily I stayed a semester ahead in finances so I opted to stay at Texas Tech and take some business courses that next semester while I waited. I knew though that if the hiring freeze was lifted, they probably wouldn’t be able to hire everyone, so to set myself apart, I decided to call the co-op office every Friday at 1 o’clock. Eventually a position opened up and I was one of the lucky few to be hired.

In May 1994, I joined NASA full-time in the safety organization. After 1 year, I met the minimum requirements for applying for astronaut selection. To increase my competitiveness, I was encouraged to seek out a rotational assignment in mission operations to broaden my experience base. My boss approved a 6-month rotational assignment to the Mission Operations Directorate as an instructor for the Environmental Control and Life Support System of the yet-to-be-flown International Space Station (ISS). About 3 months into that assignment, I was notified that I had been selected for astronaut interviews. I could not have been happier! However, during the medical tests I learned I had kidney stones, a medical disqualification. Needless to say, I was devastated. After wallowing in self pity for several days, during which I contemplated giving up on NASA altogether and moving on to something else, I arrived at a new perspective – it just wasn’t meant to be. But, as an instructor for the astronauts, I could still make a contribution to the program, with each astronaut taking a little piece of me with them. That would be the closest thing to actually going myself. With that new perspective and the support of my supervisor, my rotational position to the Mission Operations Directorate (MOD) was made permanent in 1996.

Over the course of the last 14 years in MOD I have had a number of unique and very satisfying jobs. Following my experience as an ISS Life Support Systems Instructor, I created a new position, that of Russian Training Integration Instructor, to integrate training and operations products among Houston, the Gargarin Cosmonaut Training Center, and Roscosmos (the Russian space program) in support of the Expedition 1 Space Station crew. Following the successful execution of that mission in 2001, I became the first non-astronaut CapCom (Capsule Communicator), the Flight Control position that relays information from Mission Control to the crew. I served in that role for 4 years until I became a Flight Director in 2005. I am a dual-certified Flight Director, supporting both ISS and shuttle operations. I have supported 13 ISS crews and five joint shuttle missions, including lead assignments for Expedition 14 and STS-126/ULF2.

I have no idea what is next for me, but I trust I will find myself exactly where I am supposed to be!

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cy8Qu0hXFLo&w=560&h=315]