Marie Lewis:
2020 was a banner year for NASA’s commercial crew program, restoring the nation’s capability to launch astronauts into orbit from American soil, all while working through a pandemic and managing a colossal balancing act between work and family. Now, NASA is on the cusp of launching the next crew rotation mission to the international space station, known as Crew-2.
The Rocket Ranch welcomes Dana Hutcherson, deputy manager for the program. She’ll talk about the mission ahead, reflect on the program’s 10-year anniversary and share her personal journey from supporting the space shuttle program to the new commercial model. I’m Marie Lewis, and this is The Rocket Ranch.
Launch Countdown Sequence:
EGS Program Chief Engineer, verify no constraints to launch.
Three, two, one, and lift off.
Welcome to space.
Marie Lewis:
So Dana, welcome. Thanks for being here with us.
Dana Hutcherson:
Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
Marie Lewis:
It’s a really exciting time, so I just want to jump right in and talk about all the things that are coming up.
We’ve got the next crew launch. We’ve got four astronauts getting ready to launch to the international space station. We know this as Crew-2 because it’s the second crew rotation mission to space station. What do you want people to know about this mission? What are the big takeaways?
Dana Hutcherson:
Well, as you mentioned, this is Crew-2, as we call it. This will be our second operational mission where we’re taking crews back up to the international space station, launching once again from the US, so another proud time in our American history, I think, for being able to have that routine operational mission and that capability to launch these astronauts back from the US.
I would say this is really crucial for SpaceX as well. This is their second operational mission to the space station. It kind of demonstrates their repeatability and being able to launch these missions back to back, and so it’s a really awesome time for us.
You know, we’re delivering the four veteran space flight members that are going to the international space station. So they’ve all been in space flight before, they’re not new to this. But it’s always welcome that they get to ride aboard a new spacecraft and get to the space station.
One of the interesting things about this flight, too, is that we are reusing the Dragon capsule and the Falcon 9 rocket as well in this mission. So this will be the first time that we get to see a reused vehicle being used for these private commercial missions.
Marie Lewis:
It’s interesting you brought that up, the reuse part, this Dragon capsule that the Crew-2 astronauts will be flying on, and, of course, we’re talking about Shane Kimbrough, Megan McArthur, JAXA astronaut Aki Hoshide and ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet. The Dragon capsule there’ll be in is the Crew Dragon Endeavour, which is the same Crew Dragon that NASA astronauts, Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley flew in, in the Demo-2 test flight last year.
When I was reading about some of the work you’ve done, you worked on the space shuttle Endeavour years ago. We know Shane Kimbrough flew on Space Shuttle Endeavour, and now you’re both working on and supporting a new endeavour, this one being the Crew Dragon, and one that Bob and Doug already flew in. Talk to me about that, kind of that coming full circle with a new generation of spacecraft.
Dana Hutcherson: It is. It is coming full circle. You know, when they named the Dragon spacecraft Endeavour last year, I was so excited. I was like, “Oh, this is great,” because I spent so much of my time working on the Space Shuttle Endeavour back in the shuttle days. Particularly the last three missions, I was the flow director for Space Shuttle Endeavour. So I was overseeing all of the operations that happen from landing to launch getting the Space Shuttle Endeavour prepared. Not only the shuttle, but the boosters, as well as the solid rocket motors and the external tank.
So it was a fun time for me to be able to lead a vast team of really awesome people and getting the Endeavour ready for those space shuttle flights. But now I’ve come full circle and getting to work on another Endeavour, the Dragon spacecraft.
Marie Lewis:
You talked about your past working on the Space Shuttle Endeavour. Obviously, you’re working on launching the next crew in the Crew Dragon Endeavour now. What was that transition like for you from the shuttle program to commercial crew? I know that was a big paradigm shift for NASA.
Dana Hutcherson:
At the end of shuttle, I realized that I had a huge career left at NASA, and so I needed to try to look for some opportunity. What am I passionate about? What do I want to go and do? In talking around with various programs around the center at the time, I heard about the commercial crew program. What piqued my interest about the commercial crew program was more continuing to work on that human space flight. That was something that I was really passionate about.
But what also interested me was how we were doing things differently. It was a culture shift. It was going to be something different than NASA is used to where we’re working with these public-private partnerships and trying to develop rockets, develop something that NASA has inherently done in the past, but maybe it’s an opportunity to allow these private companies to be able to launch Americans from the US again and then we can focus NASA’s energies on some of the bigger projects, moon, Mars and some of those other programs that we need our expertise for.
What’s really cool is to be able to continue to use our NASA expertise to help these private companies. So we weren’t just letting them off just working in a vacuum. We are side by side, hand in hand, working with them on helping them develop and design their rockets. But inherently, it’s still their design, it’s still their rocket, and they have to meet our NASA requirements.
So you’re absolutely right. It was a shift for us in NASA, but it was something cool that I really was passionate about working on and making a new name for NASA and something that actually there are other programs out there studying us and using our lessons learned in trying to develop their own programs to try to mimic some of the things that we’ve learned in the last several years.
Marie Lewis:
We’re now only a couple of weeks from launch. Can you talk about the work that your teams are doing now, and also reflect on the work of the last 10 years? Because another really interesting bit of trivia for folks who’ve been following the commercial crew program is that you are celebrating the 10-year anniversary of the program’s inception on April 5th.
Dana Hutcherson:
Absolutely. Let me start with the 10 years because that’s really something I’m super passionate about, too, is that I’ve been in this program for almost 10 years. I came over as soon as space shuttle Endeavour landed from its final flight, and I came over and started working in the commercial crew program, getting my feet wet in what this new program was doing. So I have, literally, been here for almost 10 years working with this program and just seeing the people on the team that we have and what they’re capable of doing, and then the new advances and the things that both Boeing and SpaceX have been able to do, allowing them to design and build their own rockets. So in the 10 years, I look back at it, I feel like it was yesterday. Time has really flown by for us, but we’ve done some amazing things.
And, like I said, there’s other programs that are looking at some of the studies, the testing that we’ve done. They’re very interested in what our partners are doing, both Boeing and SpaceX and the things that they’re accomplishing and wanting to learn more from them as well. So 10 years has been quite a long time when you think about it, but it’s flown by so fast. And we’ve just worked with not only just Boeing and SpaceX, we’ve worked with other companies throughout our history as well on helping them design space flight systems, too.
Marie Lewis:
Focusing more specifically on the work that’s ahead in these last couple of weeks before launch.
Dana Hutcherson:
Yeah, so Crew-2 leading up to this mission. This time right now, we’re wrapping up all of our documentation, I would say. SpaceX is working on closing out and finalizing all their testing on getting the maintenance of the vehicle done and complete refurbishment of the boosters happening and they’re closing out on that, as well as we’re getting ready for all of our readiness reviews to where we make sure we go through all of our checklists of everything that we’ve done and make sure we haven’t missed anything. So we’re kind of at the point now where we’re wrapping up everything and getting ready for this, button up everything for this flight.
The crews, they’re wrapping up their training with SpaceX and then they’re preparing their additional training they need to do for the international space station once they’re up there. So the crews are also getting ready. They’re doing their final checks. We’re going to be doing some simulations as well. This is where the team exercises different scenarios, making sure we’re all tested and we’re ready for flight.
Marie Lewis:
When Crew-2 launches in a couple of weeks, the plan is that they will arrive at the international space station before the Crew-1 crew departs from the space station and comes home. We call it a direct handover. Why is that important?
Dana Hutcherson:
What’s really important is to have that US presence on the space station at all times. It’s really important for the space station to maintain their research, their science, all of their capabilities that they have going. We want to maintain that US presence up on the space station, so we want to make sure that we don’t have a gap. I think that’s the most important to us is to making sure that we can get our next crew up there and ready and trained so that there is no gap between our crews to be able to continue that research and that science, the stuff that’s really important.
You mentioned a little bit, I’ll go back, about the difference in space shuttle and what we’re doing now. In the past in space shuttle, we are helping to architect and build the space station. Now we’re focused a lot on the research and the science and to be doing these studies that can help us maintain that long presence with humans aboard the space station. So we want to make sure that we can continue that presence on those space station and continue that research and studies.
Marie Lewis:
You mentioned all of the reviews that are going to be going on over the next couple of weeks leading up to launch. I think it’s also important for people to know that you’re also working on the return plans for the Crew-1 astronauts in tandem.
Dana Hutcherson:
That’s correct. We look at our return scenarios. We look at all that actually when we’re going to launch, too. So back in November, even when we were preparing for the launch, we wanted to make sure that we are ready to land given any opportunity that we needed to during the whole mission. So we prepare a lot of our efforts back, even when we launch.
But you’re right. Once again, we’re exercising that, we’re practicing all of our landing. We actually do some recovery training. We do a lot of the additional sequences and last final steps that we need to, to prepare for that return of that crew as well. So we’re kind of doing that in tandem, in parallel and making sure that we have, like I said, maintained all of our checklists and done all of our checkouts of the hardware, getting ready for that.
Marie Lewis:
I want to ask you also about just the dedication of the people that work on this program. I know as far as NASA as an agency goes, the commercial crew program is a pretty lean team. And I know you guys have faced, I hate to use the word unprecedented because it’s kind of overused this past year, but it truly is unprecedented, all the challenges that you faced as a team a full year now, launching Demo-2 in the beginning of the pandemic, we’re a year into it now. Not only was Demo-2 a success, we have the successful launch of Crew-1 getting ready to bring them home after we launched Crew-2. So it seems like none of this work has slowed down, even in the midst of global unrest, health epidemic, social unrest. How has the team been able to do that with all of these external pressures all around us?
Dana Hutcherson:
It is very true. I’m so proud of being a part of this team, being able to lead this team. It is unbelievable what we’ve done in the last year. And particularly being able to launch our first crewed mission during a pandemic, just months in actually. Our teams were at this stage getting ready for flight right now, we were still trying to figure out, are people working from home? Are they coming into an office or how are we going to handle all this? Our team adapted very quickly, most of our team works from various centers anyway. So on a daily basis, we’re used to talking to each other on teleconferences. Maybe not so much on some of the virtual applications that we’ve got in place now, but we are used to working virtually and across centers and having meetings with our fellow folks across another center. So our team adapted really quickly to that, and it’s just amazing to see what they can do and what they were able to do.
Then to launch that Demo-2 mission with Bob and Doug last year, and to see that accomplishment and then to look around at our neighbors, our friends and everyone, and they’re talking about it, it was just a bright spot in our country, across the world actually, during that time, and to be able to be a part of that. It was really cool to see our team come together.
You mentioned we do have a small program, it’s very true. They’re all rock stars in my mind, every one of them. Even the folks that are supporting a little bit of engineering time here and there, they’re all making this happen. And to have those accomplishments of launching, it just says something for the dedication of our team.
Marie Lewis:
Well, congratulations to you and your team. Well-deserved.
Dana Hutcherson:
Thank you.
Marie Lewis:
Final questions for you. Where will you be on launch day?
Dana Hutcherson:
I will be in one of the support control rooms during launch and kind of monitoring all the systems, monitoring everything as it’s going. Hopefully I will get to sneak out a little bit and be able to see the actual launch.
But it’s one of those times where you want to make sure everything is going well and checking, but you’re also have that anxious anxiety going on as well. You’re never taking a deep breath until they open up the hatch and you see the astronauts go through and get up there to the international space station safely. So it is a time where we’re excited for what’s happening, but it’s also very cool to be able to go back home and then talk with all your neighbors and friends and everybody who’s seen exactly what these special people have been able to do.
Marie Lewis:
Dana Hutcherson, thank you so much. Wishing you and the entire NASA and SpaceX teams the best of luck on this upcoming Crew-2 mission.
Dana Hutcherson:
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Marie Lewis:
A special thanks to Dana Hutcherson, deputy manager for NASA’s commercial crew program. To learn more about everything going on at the Kennedy Space Center, go to nasa.gov/Kennedy. If you’d like to find out what’s happening at our other NASA centers around the country, go to nasa.gov/podcasts. A special shout-out to our producer, John Sackman and editor, Frankie Martin. Remember on the Rocket Ranch, you got to keep looking up.