The John F. Kennedy Space Center, located on Merritt Island, Florida, is one of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) ten field centers. Since December 1968, KSC has been NASA's primary launch center of human spaceflight. Launch operations for the Apollo, Skylab and Space Shuttle programs were carried out from Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39 and managed by KSC. Located on the east coast of Florida, KSC is adjacent to Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS). The management of the two entities work very closely together, share resources and operate facilities on each other's property.
Judith Arlene Resnik was an American electrical engineer, software engineer, biomedical engineer, pilot and NASA astronaut who died in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. She was the fourth woman, the second American woman and the first Jewish woman of any nationality to fly in space, logging 145 hours in orbit.
Bonnie Jeanne Dunbar is an American engineer and retired NASA astronaut. She flew on five Space Shuttle missions between 1985 and 1998, including two dockings with the Mir space station.
Wendy Barrien Lawrence is a retired United States Navy Captain, an engineer, and former helicopter pilot and NASA astronaut. She was the first female graduate of the United States Naval Academy to fly into space and she has also visited the Russian Space Station Mir. She was a mission specialist on STS-114, the first Space Shuttle flight after the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster. She is married to Cathy Watson, a former NASA scientist.
Joan Elizabeth Higginbotham is an electrical engineer and a former NASA astronaut. She flew aboard Space Shuttle Discovery mission STS-116 as a mission specialist and is the third African American woman to go into space, after Mae Jemison and Stephanie Wilson.
Nicole Marie Passonno Stott is an American engineer and a retired NASA astronaut. She served as a flight engineer on ISS Expedition 20 and Expedition 21 and was a mission specialist on STS-128 and STS-133. After 27 years of working at NASA, the space agency announced her retirement effective June 1, 2015. She is married to Christopher Stott, a Manx-born American space entrepreneur.
Paul Charles Donnelly was an American guided missile pioneer and a senior NASA manager during the Apollo Moon landing program at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC). Responsible for the checkout of all Apollo launch vehicles and spacecraft, he was also involved in every U.S. manned launch from Alan Shepard's Mercury suborbital flight in 1961 through the tenth Space Shuttle mission (STS-41B) in 1984.
The NASA Launch Services Program (LSP) is responsible for procurement of launch services for NASA uncrewed missions and oversight of launch integration and launch preparation activity, providing added quality and mission assurance to meet program objectives. LSP operates under the NASA Space Operations Mission Directorate (SOMD).
NASA International Space Apps Challenge is annual NASA's global hackathon, first held in April 2012, and serves as innovation incubation and civic engagement program. NASA and its partners put out challenges relating to current work for which space enthusiasts around the world of all backgrounds can develop innovative solutions, particularly focusing on use of NASA data and promoting education. The project, formerly run by NASA's Office of the Chief Information Officer, is part of NASA's Earth Science Mission Directorate and is a part of the Open Government Initiative founded under President Barack Obama "creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government." It also fulfills the United States’ commitments to the Open Government Partnership.
Sandra Cauffman is a Costa Rican-American specialist in electrical engineering and physics. She is known for her work at NASA in different projects. Her profile has been highlighted by UN Women for being a positive example for women, especially, youth and children. Cauffman worked for 25 years at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD in missions such as the mission to Mars MAVEN, and Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite GOES-R. She is currently the Deputy Director of the Astrophysics Division within the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. She served as the Deputy Director for the Earth Science Division from May 2016 - October 2021. She served as Acting Director in the Earth Science Division from February 2019 to June 2020. Cauffman started as a contractor with NASA on February 1, 1988, and became a NASA employee February 11, 1991. Cauffman is the first Costa Rican woman to lead a Mars-related mission.
The Swamp Works is a lean-development, rapid innovation environment at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. It was founded in 2012, when four laboratories in the Surface Systems Office were merged into an enlarged facility with a modified philosophy for rapid technology development. Those laboratories are the Granular Mechanics and Regolith Operations Lab, the Electrostatics and Surface Physics Lab, the Applied Chemistry Lab, and the Life Support and Habitation Systems (LSHS) team. The first two of these are located inside the main Swamp Works building, while the other two use the facility although their primary work is located elsewhere. The team developed the Swamp Works operating philosophy from Kelly Johnson's Skunk Works, including the "14 Rules of Management", from the NASA development shops of Wernher von Braun, and from the innovation culture of Silicon Valley. The team prototypes space technologies rapidly to learn early in the process how to write better requirements, enabling them to build better products, rapidly, and at reduced cost. It was named the Swamp Works for similarity with the Skunk Works and the Phantom Works, but branded by the widespread marshes (swamps) on the Cape Canaveral and Merritt Island property of the Kennedy Space Center. The Swamp Works was co-founded by NASA engineers and scientists Jack Fox, Rob Mueller, and Philip Metzger. The logo, a robotic alligator, was designed by Rosie Mueller, a professional designer and the spouse of Rob Mueller.
Vandana "Vandi" Verma is a space roboticist and chief engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, known for driving the Mars rovers, notably Curiosity and Perseverance, using software including PLEXIL programming technology that she co-wrote and developed.
MiMi Aun is a Burmese-American engineer and project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). She is a lead engineer on the Mars Helicopter Ingenuity, the first extraterrestrial aircraft.
Judith A. Kersey is an American engineer. She was the first woman guidance systems engineer at NASA Kennedy Space Center.
Morgan M. Watson is an American engineer and Professor of Engineering at Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. In 1963, he became part of the first cohort of African American engineers to work at NASA in the Deep South, working on the Apollo 11 mission that sent the first man to the Moon.
Alyssa Carson is an American space enthusiast and undergraduate student who has attended numerous space camps and has visited every NASA visitor center. She has been profiled by a variety of news outlets, public interest publications, and interview shows as an unofficial astronaut-in-training.
Charlie Blackwell-Thompson is an American engineer. Blackwell-Thompson is the launch director for NASA's Exploration Ground Systems Program, based at NASA's John F. Kennedy Space Center (KSC). She oversaw the countdown and liftoff of NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft during its first flight test, called Artemis I.
Josephine Santiago-Bond, a Filipina-American systems engineer, is the creator and chief of the Advanced Engineering Development Branch at National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). She contributed to the 2017 Regolith and Environment Science and Oxygen and Lunar Volatiles Extraction (RESOLVE) project at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC), which aimed to map lunar compounds. She also heads the Safety and Mission Assurance department’s institutional division at KSC.
K. Renee Horton is an American physicist and Space Launch Systems Quality Engineer at NASA. She was the first black person to receive a PhD in material science and engineering with a concentration in physics at the University of Alabama. She is an advocate for black women in STEM fields and for disability rights.
