What an impressive team we have in Houston! The best part of my job as Deputy Administrator is the opportunity to meet with the incredible employees that make NASA the special place that it is. As part of my visits to every NASA center, I had a chance to meet with inspiring folks at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) on Monday, and to talk with them about the work they are doing to move our Journey to Mars forward.
It was a bit of a homecoming for me. Through the years, I’ve had the opportunity to work with NASA colleagues at JSC on everything from my first Shuttle experiment on STS-42 to assess astronaut workload and ergonomics; to my NASA-Mir flight experiment (1996-1998); to recent work on preventing astronaut injuries during EVA training.
During my visit, Director Ellen Ochoa and Program Manager Mark Geyer showed me a mock up of the Orion spacecraft – which will transport American astronauts to deep space in the not-too-distant future. Dr. Ochoa and I also had the opportunity to spend some quality time with “Robonaut,” a state-of-the-art “humanoid” robot – built and designed by the team at JSC – to work alongside our astronauts in space. Earlier in the day, we talked to the teams who are involved with designing next generation spacesuits and life support systems, passions of mine.
On a personal note, I very much enjoyed meeting some of the younger, recently-hired NASA employees (along with a few of my former students!), who represent the future of our agency and space exploration. When American astronauts reach Mars in the 2030s I have no doubt that they will be a big part of the reason why.
With December’s successful flight test of Orion, to the exciting research taking place that will make crewed missions to Mars possible (including the One-Year Crew and twin studies) to all the advances the JSC team is making on developing the technologies to drive exploration, these are exciting times for JSC and for the entire NASA family.