Visiting NASA’s Mission Control Center at JSC

On January 17, 2019, HASSE Space School college program students were invited by NASA Flight Director, Rick Henfling and
Ground Control, William foster to a tour of the Christopher C. Kraft Jr. Mission Control Center at NASA’s Johnson’s Space Center.
It was an exclusive opportunity to visit International Space Station’s mission control.

Rick Henfling oversee from Mission Control in Houston teams who support human space exploration missions.
Henfling also has worked on the space shuttle program.
A flight director is in charge of keeping the astronauts and the International Space Station safe by leading teams of controllers,
researchers, engineers and support personnel at the Johnson Space Center.

If something goes wrong, flight directors have to be able to make split-second decisions while holding someone’s life in their hands.
For example, in 1970 during the Apollo 13 mission, Gene Kranz was in charge of an enormous team on the ground
that helped bring the three astronauts home after an oxygen tank explosion forced them to abort their trip to the moon.