For many NASA employees, playing a role in space exploration fuels their passion for the work they do. For Mark Vaccaro, that passion comes from seeing structures and components come together to become new, powerful machines.
“I’m interested in the machines that create machines – the mills, the lathes, and all of the equipment that it takes to build something,” Vaccaro said. “I’ve always enjoyed the idea of building and creating.”
As manager of the structures and assembly team for the Space Launch System (SLS) solid rocket boosters, Vaccaro oversees the integration of the boosters with SLS, the most powerful rocket NASA has ever built. He has helped get booster hardware ready for the Artemis I launch at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. He also leads the teams at Kennedy’s Booster Fabrication Facility where the aft skirt and forward assembly hardware is being prepared for three additional Artemis missions.
NASA recently recognized Vaccaro’s work by awarding him a 2022 Outstanding Leadership Medal. Another reward was getting to see the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft up close as the stack rolled out of the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) for the first time in March.
Seeing the rocket out in the open was wonderful after months of working on the boosters with parts of the rocket obscured by the VAB’s retractable platforms.
“It’s a whole lot bigger than I imagined,” he said. “As we stacked the boosters segment by segment and brought in the core stage, at each of the joins, VAB work platforms go together around the rocket. Once the vehicle started being built above the boosters, we only really got to see 30 feet above us. With all the platforms around it, you can’t really get a sense of the scale. A lot of times something looks big inside a room and you take it outside and you lose that sense of scale. But seeing that rocket roll out, seeing it on the launch pad, It is impressive. It is a massive launch vehicle.”
A Huntsville, Alabama native, Vaccaro has a degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Alabama in Huntsville. He joined NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in 1989; his first job with the agency was monitoring Boeing’s design contract for International Space Station construction. After returning from Operation Desert Storm, where he served in the U. S. Marine Corps, he worked in mechanical systems design for numerous NASA projects, including antennae deployment and tether release systems, telescoping booms, and ground support equipment. In 2005, he joined the Boosters Office, working avionics for space shuttle missions. For the last 20 shuttle missions, he served as deputy chief engineer for boosters.
Vaccaro became subsystem manager for the SLS booster assembly team in 2011, and the team lead for hardware integration in 2018. When he isn’t building boosters for Artemis missions, he builds other things, including furniture created in his home workshop and landscape design for his yard.