Norman L. Phelps

Norman L. Phelps is a mission manager for NASA’s Launch Services Program (LSP) at John F. Kennedy Space Center in Florida. In this position, Phelps leads the mission integration teams for NASA’s larger payloads and observatories. He manages the launch services integration and launch vehicle engineering activities, ensuring that the launch vehicles meet agency requirements.

Phelps also is co-mission manager for NASA’s CubeSat Launch Initiative, which provides launch opportunities for U.S.-based CubeSat developers launching payloads as secondary or auxiliary payloads on previously planned launches or commercial missions to low-Earth orbit and deep space destinations as well as International Space Station deployments.

Experience

Phelps arrived at Kennedy Space Center in 2012. He worked in structural dynamics in LSP, running models and analyses that evaluated a spacecraft’s ability to survive the launch environment. Some of the missions he worked on included the Insight Mars lander; Soil Moisture Active Passive; Tracking and Data Relay Satellite-M; and the Joint Polar Satellite System-2. In addition, he served as the mission manager for the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment, or CAPSTONE, a mission that served as a lunar pathfinder for the Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit where NASA’s Lunar Gateway will reside.

Phelps began his career with NASA in 2003 at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. He worked as a structural analyst on several programs, including the NIRSPEC instrument for the James Webb Space Telescope, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, and the Magnetospheric Multi-Scale Mission. Phelps also worked as a radar engineer, integrating synthetic aperture radar systems into small unmanned aerial vehicles. He also was responsible for the integration and qualification of spacecraft components and instruments.

Education

Phelps earned a Bachelor of Science in 2004 from North Carolina State University and a Master of Science in 2006 from the University of Maryland College Park – both in aerospace engineering.

Personal

Growing up with both parents in the U.S. Army, Phelps has no designated hometown, though he has lived around the world. He was born in Germany, but has lived in Seoul, South Korea; El Paso, Texas; Columbia, South Carolina; Anchorage, Alaska; Minneapolis, Minnesota; San Pedro, California; Newport News, Virginia; High Point, North Carolina; Odenton, Maryland; and Orlando, Florida. 

He currently resides in Winter Springs with his wife, Nisha, son, Micah, and daughter, Amaya. They have a dog named Luna.

Phelps enjoys hiking, reading, writing, playing pickup basketball, skiing, and whitewater rafting. 

Biography last updated May 2023