Dana Weigel

Dana Weigel manages NASA’s Low Earth Orbit Program, providing strategic leadership for a broad and dynamic portfolio across the low Earth orbit environment. She oversees integrated operations and development activities involving the International Space Station, commercial crew and cargo transportation services, private astronaut missions, and the advancement of commercial destinations. Weigel guides NASA’s efforts to maintain a sustained U.S. human presence in low Earth orbit and collaborates with industry and international partners to enable robust capabilities that support NASA’s human spaceflight objectives. 

Previously, Weigel was the agency’s International Space Station program manager, responsible for the management, development, integration, and operation of the orbiting laboratory. The nearly $3 billion-per-year, 15-nation program encompasses the design, manufacture, testing, and delivery of complex hardware and software and its integration with international partner modules into a fully operational space station with permanent human presence. She also led policy development, international partner negotiations, cargo missions, low Earth orbit commercialization efforts, onboard research and utilization, and ensured crew health and safety and health, and the space station’s integrity.  

Weigel previously served as the International Space Station deputy program manager, sharing responsibility for day-to-day program management. She also worked as the ISS Vehicle Office manager, responsible for sustaining and sparingefforts, vehicle systems development, payload facility hardware, vehicle risk management, and integration of commercial and international partner elements into the station. 

Before that, Weigel served as deputy chief of the Flight Director Office from 2012 through 2014, leading the Extravehicular Activity Recovery Team that investigated and resolved a major in-flight spacewalk anomaly. She also served as deputy manager of the Mission Operations Space Transportation Division and led a NASA Headquarters-sponsored study focused on assessing capabilities and technologies needed to repair satellites, perform spacewalks, and live in geosynchronous Earth orbit. 

From 2004 to 2014, Weigel was a NASA flight director. She served as lead NASA flight director for Expedition 13, the STS-123 (1J/A) mission, and the first H-IIB Transfer Vehicle (HTV) mission, and later as lead International Space Station flight director from 2008 through 2011. 

Weigel started her career in 1994 with Barrios Technology as an extravehicular activity officer and became a NASA civil servant in 2004. She holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Texas A&M University in College Station.