Contractor to Civil Servant: NASA Welcomes Kenny Heckle

Kenny Heckle grew up in Orlando, just west of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. An 80s child, he comes from a long line of union pipefitters and fabricators.

Heckle recalls the day 42 years ago at KARS Park, which is a NASA Exchange–run recreation area for the agency’s workforce and their guests, when he attended an office party with his father. Heckle had his German Shepherd with him when a man who seemed to be enamored with the canine asked him who he was. “I’m Kenny Heckle, Wayne’s son,” he said. And the man who knew his dad well replied, “Why don’t you work for us (at NASA)?”

Two weeks later, Heckle was working at the center alongside his dad.

Heckle wasn’t a typical new employee. At 19, he already had seven years of mechanical experience, working on his father’s short-track stock cars, building and fabricating parts they needed. He later attended welding school before arriving for his first job as a contractor at NASA Kennedy’s Launch Equipment Test Facility (LETF) in 1984.

Since the 1970s, the LETF has provided NASA a place to safely assess machinery and designs to support launches through a unique set of structures, equipment, and tools to test full-scale umbilicals and release mechanisms.

Today, Heckle serves as the mechanical operations lead at NASA Kennedy’s LETF.

During the past four decades, Heckle has helped numerous NASA programs and commercial partners test their equipment ahead of launch, and in some instances, during and after liftoff. In his early years, his job was to test every umbilical on the launch pad and all the ground support equipment needed for Launch Complex 39A and B, even for Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

Just two years into his career, Space Shuttle Challenger had a failure of the O-ring seals and broke apart just over a minute into its flight. Heckle remembered watching the catastrophic liftoff that morning, and hearing the broadcaster say Challenger was lost. A couple of weeks later, his team was tasked with helping to figure out what happened.

“You know, there’s always risk with spaceflight,” Heckle said. “But we got so consistent that we didn’t think something like that could happen and it hit hard. But then being able to come back and get the program going again, and being successful, that makes you proud.”

Nearly two decades later, Heckle’s team was asked to help with yet another investigation. After the Colombia accident, Heckle and his team were charged with showing how severe the damage was through their testing, and how to mitigate ice hitting a wing in the future. They spent hours shooting projectiles at thermal tiles, using ultrasonic sensors to track the data.

In recent years, Heckle has helped work on the first two Artemis missions. During the Artemis II wet dress rehearsal, there was a liquid hydrogen leak. Heckle was working long days, troubleshooting and fabricating possible solutions with Kennedy’s Prototype Lab. For Artemis I they had a similar leak, and Heckle’s team developed a process to slow fill the cryogenics and the LETF sent that information to the Artemis I launch team to implement.

During decades of problem-solving, Heckle and most of his team were contractors, having to work through the bureaucracy of working solutions across different contractors, as well as with NASA. On May 4, Heckle and 19 of his teammates applied and became NASA civil servants as part of the administrator’s workforce directive. The work done by the LETF team was deemed a critical capability to NASA’s future, and as such, the work was moved from an outside vendor to civil service, ensuring NASA is staffed and equipped to lead the most complex engineering and operational challenges directly.

The test facility ensures NASA retains the technical readiness, flexibility, and risk mitigation capabilities required for Artemis, SLS (Space Launch System), and future government and commercial missions. As the mechanical operations lead, Heckle has already noticed efficiencies with being able to get work done and securing the supplies needed now the LETF team has joined the civil servant workforce.

“If we continue to work together as a team and not have barriers, I think that will be great for the program moving forward no matter what we’re launching,” Heckle said.

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Cheryl Warner

NASA Astronaut Andrew Morgan Retires

May 28, 2026

After a 12-year career at NASA, U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Andrew R. Morgan has retired from the agency to continue his military service. Morgan spent 272 days in space aboard the International Space Station.

NASA selected Morgan to join its 21st astronaut class in August 2013. He launched to the space station aboard a Soyuz MS-13 spacecraft on July 20, 2019, the same day as the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing, from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Morgan served as a flight engineer on International Space Station Expeditions 60, 61, and 62, contributing to hundreds of scientific experiments, technology demonstrations, and space station maintenance activities. He traveled over 115 million miles (about 185 million km) while completing more than 4,300 Earth orbits over the course of his mission.

“Drew’s leadership and commitment to human spaceflight exemplify the very best of NASA,” said Vanessa Wyche, director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. “From his service aboard the International Space Station to his continued passion for exploration, Drew’s impact across the agency has been profound. His steadfast dedication to the agency will continue to inspire generations to come.”

During his nine months aboard the station, Morgan conducted seven spacewalks for a total of 45 hours and 48 minutes of spacewalking time, breaking the record for a single spaceflight by a U.S. astronaut. Four of his spacewalks were dedicated to repairing the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, a particle physics detector designed to search for evidence of antimatter and dark matter.

“Drew approached every challenge with quiet confidence, sharp judgment, and an unwavering commitment to his team,” said Scott Tingle, chief of the Astronaut Office at NASA Johnson. “Whether serving in orbit or strengthening crew readiness here on the ground, he consistently elevated the people and missions around him. His leadership and example will continue to resonate across the astronaut corps for years to come.”

Morgan’s career at NASA also included serving as the Astronaut Office’s mission support branch chief, crew operations officer, astronaut mission control team liaison for Expeditions 67 and 68, and Army detachment commander. In his final two years at NASA, Morgan served a rotational assignment back to the U.S. Army as commander of U.S. Army Garrison Kwajalein Atoll, and senior military advisor for the U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of the Marshall Islands.

Morgan was born in Morgantown, West Virginia, but considers New Castle, Pennsylvania, his hometown. At the time of his NASA astronaut selection, he was a board-certified emergency physician and had served in elite special forces units around the globe. He is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, and the U.S. Army War College. He is currently serving as the commanding general of White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

“It has been an honor to serve in the nation’s space program,” Morgan said. “I am proud to have represented my country on an international mission that brings the best of humanity together for a shared purpose. I will miss the camaraderie of my incredible NASA teammates and their unparalleled expertise. While leaving the astronaut corps is bittersweet, I’m excited to continue serving our country as a leader in the U.S. Army.”

To learn more about how NASA explores the unknown and innovates for the benefit of humanity, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/astronauts

-end-

Anna Schneider

Johnson Space Center, Houston

281-483-5111

anna.c.schneider@nasa.gov

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Wendy K. Avedisian

Going Low and Slow in Testing

NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft flies above NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, on April 28, 2026, during testing focused on lower-speed and altitude flight conditions in support of NASA’s Quesst mission.

The X-59 has completed initial test flights at high altitudes and near-supersonic speeds, opening the door for additional flights focused on its full operating range. These more recent, lower-altitude flights at lesser speeds are helping to confirm the X-plane’s performance across a wide range of conditions, including flying with the landing gear both retracted and extended.

Read more about this series of test flights.

Image credit: NASA/Jim Ross

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HQ Web Team

NASA’s Roman Mission Preps to Unveil New Populations of Faraway Worlds

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is poised to make a major leap in the hunt for worlds outside our solar system, known as exoplanets. Scientists expect the mission to reveal around 100,000 worlds — a staggering leap compared to the nearly 6,300 found so far thanks to NASA missions working in tandem with other observatories. And Roman will primarily find them in underexplored regions of the Milky Way.

“Our galaxy is home to a variety of different environments, but when it comes to hunting for exoplanets, we’ve really only explored one: our own neighborhood,” said Elisa Quintana, an exoplanet researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Quintana leads a team focused on building software and simulations to help prepare for Roman’s exoplanet transit observations. “Roman will extend the search far enough to encompass other galactic habitats, which could help us learn how planet formation varies across different regions of the Milky Way.”

Most known exoplanets are located within a couple thousand light-years of Earth. But  one of Roman’s core surveys will peer all the way through the Milky Way’s galactic bulge, the central hub where stars are packed more densely than anywhere else, to the fringes of the far side of the galaxy.

Exploring Earth’s birthplace

Roman will monitor stars scattered throughout a deep slice of the galaxy to watch for any that change in brightness. Some stars periodically dim as orbiting planets cross in front of, or transit, them. Others temporarily appear to brighten as the gravity of an intervening star and orbiting planets magnify a farther star’s light, thanks to a phenomenon called microlensing.

These two methods tend to reveal very different types of planets. The transit method, which Roman will use to reveal around 100,000 worlds, is best at finding gigantic, scorching worlds since they block the most starlight and transit more frequently.

Microlensing, which Roman will use to find more than 1,000 worlds, is better suited to finding planets with larger orbits, like those in our solar system, whose gravity can be more easily separated from the gravity of their host stars. Microlensing can find planets as small as Earth and Mars and can find them within their star’s habitable zone and even farther out. Such planets are almost undetectable by other methods and are virtually unknown outside of our own solar system. Pairing the two techniques will help astronomers explore planet formation throughout the galaxy, including Earth’s birthplace and beyond.

Today, our solar system is located about 27,000 light-years from the center of the Milky Way. However, scientists think it formed about 10,000 light-years closer in and then migrated out to its current position.

The Sun’s chemical makeup is the primary clue. Most stars that form in the outskirts of the galaxy are low in heavy elements, which is a blanket term for any elements other than hydrogen and helium, which formed with the birth of the universe. Heavy elements are forged by stars, so they’re more common in places that have seen successive generations of stars.

Stars in the galactic bulge are much older than those in the disk of the Milky Way and thus have a slightly different chemical mixture that is richer in elements like silicon, oxygen, and magnesium.

Those differences matter because planets form out of the same material as their host stars. Stars with different compositions may host planets that are different too, perhaps rockier or larger. It could even influence whether planets form at all, or how many coalesce with each star.

Astronomers have already seen hints of such connections nearby.

“Stars with more heavy elements tend to host more planets, especially giant ones,” said Robby Wilson, a postdoctoral fellow at NASA Goddard, who led a study about Roman’s expected transiting planet yield.

By sampling completely different populations of stars and planets, Roman will take these studies to a whole new level. Astronomers may soon uncover how common planetary systems like our own are throughout the Milky Way.

“Roman will be especially powerful because it will observe hundreds of millions of distant stars, letting scientists compare faraway planet populations to those found nearby,” said Wilson. “All of that data will give us a lot to comb through, so we’re prepping by creating synthetic data, detecting simulated planets, and using machine learning to filter out false positives. That way we’ll be ready to go right away when real data comes pouring in.” And since all Roman data will be publicly available, anyone can join the hunt for other worlds.

Otherworldly climates

Scientists also could study the atmospheres of perhaps a few thousand of the transiting planets Roman finds.

“Roman won’t analyze atmospheres in the same in-depth way as missions like NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, but it will gather different information on a much larger scale,” Wilson said.

While telescopes like Webb search for detailed chemical fingerprints on individual targets, Roman will measure temperature patterns and climate behavior for thousands of planets. The mission will create a big-picture statistical view of exoplanet atmospheres, which Webb could follow-up on for further study.

Roman’s infrared heat vision will detect glowing “hot Jupiters.” About as large as Jupiter, which is around 11 times as wide as Earth, hot Jupiters orbit their stars in only a few days. These worlds are warm enough to radiate a detectable amount of infrared light.

Planetary systems with transiting hot Jupiters can have two dimming episodes: one when they cross in front of the star, and a second smaller one when they pass behind it and the star blocks the planet’s light.

“That secondary dip tells us how bright, and therefore how hot, the planet is,” said Wilson. “By tracking how the planet’s brightness changes over its orbit, Roman can also see differences between the day side and night side, and even detect shifts in where the hottest region is on the planet. That tells us about atmospheric winds and heat circulation.”

“NASA’s now-retired Kepler mission’s survey of 100,000 stars revolutionized the field of exoplanets over a decade ago, and taught us that planets are even more common than stars in our galaxy,” said Jorge Martínez-Palomera, an astronomer at NASA Goddard who is helping prepare for Roman’s exoplanet data. “Roman’s galactic bulge survey will observe around 100 million stars and probe underexplored areas of our galaxy, which will provide a foundational dataset that will likewise revolutionize what we know about other worlds and our place in the universe.”

To learn more about NASA’s Roman mission, visit:

https://nasa.gov/roman

Download high-resolution video and images from NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio

By Ashley Balzer
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

Media contact:

Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
301-286-1940

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