Johnny Mathis
Chief Engineer
Contents
Johnny Mathis serves as the International Space Station/Orion Ground Processing chief engineer at Kennedy Space Center. He has served in this role since March 2020. In this role, he is the Engineering Technical Authority (ETA) for International Space Station (ISS) and Orion Ground Processing, providing the insight necessary to ensure that all ISS and Orion ground support equipment, flight hardware, processes and procedures comply with the requirements necessary to guarantee mission success.
Experience
Prior to his current role, Mathis was the deputy chief engineer for ISS/Orion Ground Processing. Mathis has also held the positions of ISS assistant chief engineer and ISS lead fluids engineer.
Mathis started his career at NASA as a pre-co-op in June 1984, with the Malfunction Analysis Branch, before entering the co-op program and transitioning to the Spacelab Program where he supported experiment integration, testing and payload processing activities at Kennedy. Mathis gained experience, supporting pressurized and unpressurized Spacelab missions beginning with Spacelab-2 as a Payloads Mechanical Systems engineer and ultimately served as lead payloads mechanical engineer for missions, including Space Radar Laboratory-2 (SRL-2), Lidar In-space Telescope Experiment-1 (LITE-1), United States Microgravity Laboratory-2 (USML-2) and Tethered Satellite System ‑ Reflight (TSS-1R).
As the Spacelab Program was ending, Mathis moved to support ISS Utilization and was responsible for the operational planning and physical integration of ISS science payloads and middeck payloads. As a Technical Integration manager, he led the planning, requirements definition, test documentation and execution of ISS and Shuttle Payload test and verification activities.
Education
Mathis graduated from the University of Central Florida (UCF) with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering in 1989. He also holds a master’s degree in engineering management, also from UCF.
Personal
Born in Copperhill, Tennessee, Mathis has been a resident of Florida since 1972. Mathis resides in Volusia County with his wife Mary. He is a member of Tau Beta Pi National Engineering Honor Society, Pi Tau Sigma National Mechanical Engineering Honor Society, and is the recipient of numerous honors and awards during his time at Kennedy Space Center.
Biography last updated April 2020