Rex Engelhardt

Rex Engelhardt is a mission manager for NASA’s Launch Services Program at John F. Kennedy Space Center in Florida. His job is to lead mission integration teams, which are responsible for managing all integration and launch vehicle engineering aspects related to his assigned missions.

Experience

Since joining NASA in 1989, Engelhardt worked as a site manager for the space shuttle mobile launch platforms, a shuttle payload integration leader, a shuttle payload operations manager, a launch site support manager, and then acted as the first Kennedy liaison to Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, which was also treated as a Project Management Development Program assignment.

Engelhardt was born in Las Cruces, New Mexico, but spent most of his childhood in Oregon. He moved to Florida in January 1983 for his first assignment in the U.S. Air Force at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (now called Cape Canaveral Space Force Station). He left the Air Force in 1989 and joined NASA about two months later.

Education

Engelhardt is a graduate of Cascade High School in Turner, Oregon. He graduated from Oregon State University with a Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering in 1982. He received his Master’s in engineering management from the University of Central Florida in 1996.

Personal

Engelhardt resides in Merritt Island, Florida. He has two children, a son, Steven, in the United States Marine Corps, and a daughter, Tiffany, a senior in high school. They have two dogs, Scout and Winter. In his spare time, Engelhardt works on his audio-video system and plays guitar. He also plays music with the youth at his church.

Biography last updated April 2023