FLIGHT OPPORTUNITIES COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE WEBINAR
Flight Testing Technologies, Instruments, and Experiments with NASA’s Flight Opportunities Program
March 5, 2025
Speakers
- Greg Peters, Program Manager, NASA’s Flight Opportunities program
- Danielle McCulloch, Program Executive, NASA’s Flight Opportunities program
- Macarena Parra, Ph.D., Technologist, NASA’s Flight Opportunities program
Abstract
Join us on March 5 to hear an overview of the Flight Opportunities program and how researchers within and outside of NASA can engage with the program’s flight testing capabilities. Learn how Flight Opportunities is a resource serving the agency through access to suborbital and hosted orbital flight tests — via IDIQ (Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity) contracts and the strategic use of funding mechanisms — as well as subject matter expertise on flight tests with a range of commercial providers and a variety of flight platforms. We encourage researchers across NASA, at other federal agencies, and beyond to join us and learn how to flight test their technologies, instruments, and experiments with Flight Opportunities.
Speaker Bios
Greg Peters is currently the program manager for NASA’s Flight Opportunities program out of Armstrong Flight Research Center. During his career at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Greg held many roles across multiple projects and missions. Most notably Greg served as a Surface Scientist for the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL, Curiosity) Mission, the Project Scientist for Lunar PUFFER Instruments development, and the Cognizant Engineer for Mars geologic analogs development for the Mars 2020 (Perseverance) Mission. In 2007, Greg received a NASA Space Act Award for conceiving RASP sampling technology, which was flown on the Phoenix Mars Mission in 2008. RASP sampling provided the historical-first water-ice sample ever taken on another planet. In 2017, Greg received a NASA Voyager Individual Award for his work in determining rock properties from MSL drill telemetry. Greg also spent four years as the Chief Operations Officer at Firestar Technologies, an advanced propulsion company at the Mojave Air and Space Port.
Danielle McCulloch is currently the program executive for NASA’s Flight Opportunities program within the agency’s Space Technology Mission Directorate. In this role, she provides strategic integration between researchers, mission stakeholders, and flight providers, as well as other NASA programs, to maximize impact for technology advancement and ensure that the researcher community is actively engaged in available flight test opportunities. She comes to this position after serving as both the program manager and deputy program manager for Flight Opportunities. Before joining NASA, Danielle held various leadership roles in the medical device and paper manufacturing industries and was vice president for a small technology transfer consultancy. Danielle’s experience underlines her passion for innovation, entrepreneurship, and fostering researcher and inventor diversity.
Macarena Parra, Ph.D., is a technology team member of NASA’s Flight Opportunities program. She previously worked at NASA’s Ames Research Center, starting out with postdoctoral research in bone remodeling before moving to work with science payloads. She also served as project scientist for several payloads flown on the Space Shuttle and International Space Station.
