Commercial Crew Program

NASA has selected Kathy Lueders as program manager for the agency’s Commercial Crew Program (CCP). Lueders has served as acting program manager since October 2013. She will help keep the nation’s space program on course to launch astronauts from American soil by 2017 aboard spacecraft built by American companies.

“This is a particularly critical time for NASA’s human spaceflight endeavors as the Commercial Crew Program enters into contract implementation,” said William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Kathy’s experience and leadership skills developed during the ISS commercial resupply contract activity will be critical to safely and effectively leading commercial crew transportation activities for NASA.” 

Read details here.

Improved manufacturing techniques, simplified control systems and cutting edge computers are some of the advancements industry partners of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program plan to employ to make their missions successful. This week, we’ll show you some of the notable innovations that each of the CCP partners have included in their designs up to this point in their own efforts to make spaceflight safe, reliable and cost-effective. NASA’s role in this is to offer expert advice drawn from 50 years of experience.

 

Astronauts today routinely conduct live interviews with Earthbound students and reporters from orbit aboard the International Space Station, but that was not always the case. NASA astronauts did not broadcast anything live from space for the Mercury or Gemini programs. The first Apollo mission changed that, however, and the Apollo 7 crew of Wally Schirra, Donn Eisele and Walt Cunningham showed the way to conduct a live show in a tradition that eventually included showing the first landing and steps onto the moon and then daily life aboard NASA’s first space station, Skylab. Shuttle astronauts spent considerable time on the flight deck in front of a camera to detail for viewers and chroniclers what it meant to work in space on some of the most sophisticated missions undertaken. Future audiences will see astronauts emerge from Commercial Crew vehicles into the space station. Check out the giant leap that broadcast quality has seen from Apollo 7’s October 1968 transmission to those seen today from the space station.