Shad Combs
Acting Director, Wallops Flight Facility
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Shad Combs serves as the acting director of NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. In this role, Combs is responsible for overarching executive management, strategic direction, and institutional oversight of the operations at the Wallops spaceport and test range in adherence with Kennedy Space Center objectives, agency priorities, and national space policies, further fortifying the nation’s access to space through a strong launch center enterprise
Experience
Combs brings more than 25 years of experience in aerospace engineering, launch and range operations, project and program management, safety and mission assurance, and organizational leadership.
Combs’ appointment marks a return to Wallops, where he previously spent more than a decade in technical and leadership positions supporting the facility’s diverse launch and flight mission portfolio. His experience at Wallops has included responsibility for range facilities, infrastructure, instrumentation, and technical services supporting orbital and suborbital launches, International Space Station resupply missions, technology demonstrations, sounding rockets, and other government missions. He also held project leadership roles for complex flight-test activities, including NASA’s Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator project and the Mars Ascent Vehicle Flight Test.
Most recently, Combs has served as a portfolio manager within Human Spaceflight Mission Directorate Commercial Access to Space Program at NASA Headquarters. Among his principal accomplishments, he led NASA’s agencywide Liquid Oxygen and Methane Assessment Project, an effort to address safety challenges associated with the increasing use of liquid oxygen and methane propulsion systems.
Before beginning his aerospace career, Combs was an enlisted serviceman in the United States Marine Corps.
Education
Combs earned a Bachelor of Science in Engineering Physics from Murray State University and a Master of Science in Engineering Management from the University of Alabama in Huntsville.