NASA has selected three new flight directors who will manage and carry out shuttle flights and International Space Station expeditions — they are Dina Contella, Scott Stover, and Ed Van Cise and they will join a select group of individuals who lead human spaceflights from Mission Control at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
A flight director leads and orchestrates planning and integration activities with flight controllers, payload customers, international partners, and technical and program support across the agency. Flight directors also are involved in developing plans and reviewing systems for future Constellation Program exploration missions. All of the recently selected individuals will begin training as space station flight directors.
Contella was born in Austin, Texas, and earned a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from Texas A&M University in 1992. She began working at NASA in the cooperative education program in 1990. Since 1995, Contella has served as a space shuttle and space station flight controller and astronaut instructor responsible for planning, training and executing spacewalks.
Stover was born in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, but considers Lemasters, Pennsylvania, to be his hometown. He earned a bachelor’s degree in aerospace from Pennsylvania State University in 2000, and a master’s degree in Space Architecture from the University of Houston in 2004. Since 2000, Stover has supported six space shuttle assembly flights to the station as a member of the Power, Heating, Articulation, Lighting and Control, or Phalcon team that manages the space station’s electrical power system. He has led the group since 2008.
Van Cise was born in Bay City, Michigan, and earned a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 2000. Van Cise joined NASA as a member of the Operations Support Officer, or OSO, which coordinates station repair, maintenance and assembly operations in 2000. Most recently, he has served as special assistant to the director of Mission Operations in a leadership development assignment.
