Copyright 2007, 2008 - Women With Wings, St. Louis

Background: The author Theresa Perks is the former president of Saint Louis University's Women in Aviation chapter. She describes her work at NASA and  her role in monitoring the Space Shuttle  from mission control in Houston, TX.

To explain a bit more about what my role actually is, first of all, I’ll explain a bit about the Flight Control Rooms (more commonly known as Mission Control).  There are 2 separate FCRs, one for Station and one for Shuttle.  These are the rooms that you might see if you watched any NASA TV.  Each “Front Room” Flight Controller sits in one of these rooms, and they all have a “back room,” or a Multi-Purpose Support Room (MPSR) that supports them.  I work in the back room, so chances are pretty slim that you’d see me on TV. 

My front room counterpart is ACO (Assembly and  Checkout Officer), in the Shuttle Flight Control Room.  My position (in the back room) is called ACO Systems.  The ACO team is responsible for all of the different payloads/experiments that are run on the shuttle, the Wing Leading Edge Sensor System (to detect catastrophic impacts to the wing leading edges), and overall integration between the ISS and Shuttle.    During complex ISS assembly missions (when we take up new pieces of the station, like we’re doing on the next flight, STS-130), a lot of times ACO will actually go physically sit in the Station FCR, just to make things easier for the assembly. 

 What I’ve been doing so far this mission is keeping up to date on all of the payload operations and coordinating to make sure that our procedures are correct and get updated with the shuttle crewmembers as necessary.   Before the flight we had a lot of work to be done to make sure that  everything was ready from a payload standpoint, but of course, things change, so we make sure that everything works out real-time.

So to sum it up, I'm incredibly excited to be working as a part of the space program.  I'm really proud to play a part in human spaceflight!

-Theresa

 

Launch was pretty exciting.  My role in the actual launch of the shuttle is pretty minimal.  Most of my work comes once we actually get into orbit, so I’ll be on console until the day after Thanksgiving when we land. I have the great luck that my shift has been starting at 3:30am most days (will start at 1am by the end the mission).  There are 3 shifts for the Flight Control Team  (Orbit 1, 2, and 3).   I’m working Orbit 1, which is about from crew wake to about the middle of their work day.