Astronauts’ Perspectives on NESC Contributions to Mission Safety and Success
This article is from the 2025 Technical Update.
The exact date when the crew of Space Shuttle Columbia was lost is readily recalled by Patrick Forrester, as it likely would be for any NASA employee in service that Saturday morning when the Shuttle broke up during reentry. Forrester had flown to ISS for the first time in 2001 aboard Discovery in support of the STS-105 mission. He was scheduled to fly again shortly after Columbia’s February 1, 2003 return. That date is now a somber anniversary etched in his memory.
“I had three classmates on Columbia,” Forrester said. “As an astronaut class, you are even closer because you are selected together and go through that initial training together.” That was the reason he said yes when asked to join the NESC in 2009 as the NESC Chief Astronaut—the liaison between the NESC and the Astronaut Office. “The NESC was started after the Columbia accident, and it was really just an honor to be part of that organization where the focus was to make sure that didn’t happen again.”
The NESC has had an astronaut liaison for most of its 22-year history. “It stands to reason that the individuals the NESC works so hard to protect should have a seat at the table,” said NESC Director Tim Wilson.
“The Chief Astronaut gives them direct access to the NESC for insight into technical activities that might affect them and a forum for voicing concerns that otherwise might not have surfaced. The interface gives us access to them as well; astronauts have lent their expertise and unique perspectives to many NESC assessments over the years. As the agency’s front-line risk takers, they are by definition our primary stakeholders, and much of what we do revolves around ensuring the risks they take are well-understood and mitigated.” The current and some of the former Chief Astronauts shared their perspectives on how they feel about the NESC and whether this organization—designed to increase the overall safety of their jobs—was accomplishing that mission.
Patrick Forrester
NESC Chief Astronaut 2009-2016
It would be four years after Columbia that Forrester would fly again. That was June 2007 aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis as part of STS-117, where he helped deliver the second starboard truss and third set of solar arrays to ISS. During his years with the NESC, Forrester assisted in NESC assessments or arranged for others from the Astronaut Office to participate. He recalled being a part of an NESC review of the astronaut pre-breathe protocol used before extravehicular activities, and he also worked with fellow astronaut Dr. Nancy Currie, who at that time was a principal engineer for the NESC, to assess the procedures and plans to ensure alternative means of return for STS-135 in the event Atlantis could not provide it. Since the other Space Shuttle orbiters had retired, rescue capability via Space Shuttle was not an option for this mission, he said. “We came up with the plan of how they could stay on the space station and use a Russian Soyuz to get them back.”
Forrester always felt, however, that his primary mission was to educate others about the NESC, which was a relatively new organization at that time. “I tried to help them understand that the NESC was engineering. This is what we do. This is what we need. It was one of my goals when I served: to help people understand what the NESC did.”
After leaving his NESC post to become chief of the Astronaut Office, he continued to call on the NESC during the lead-up to the launch of SpaceX Crew Dragon Demonstration Mission-2, the first SpaceX flight with crew aboard. “I was feeling the weight and the responsibility as the chief of putting Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley on that rocket for the first time. I took a lot of comfort in knowing how involved the NESC was in those decisions.”
Barry “Butch” Wilmore
NESC Chief Astronaut 2018-2020
Following Forrester’s tenure, Butch Wilmore served as the NESC Chief Astronaut for two years. A former Navy test pilot, Wilmore joined NASA in 2000, flying three missions to the ISS, including his most recent as commander of the Boeing Starliner’s first crewed flight. He took on the NESC liaison role already well acquainted with the NESC’s mission.
“I’m very familiar with the certification, flight readiness, the flight readiness reviews, and how the NESC is used to validate some of the assumptions and the engineering that takes place. And I wasn’t just aware of the organization, but knew exactly what it did and what benefit it was,” Wilmore said. “When I worked with the NESC, it gave me knowledge to understand more of what and how they went about doing things—that deep engineering analysis. And as an operator, I don’t dig into the engineering analysis. I just see big picture. So, when I would see something that wasn’t right, I knew the NESC could work on it and figure out why it didn’t look right to me.”
Wilmore ended his NESC tenure when he was chosen as the Starliner commander, but continued to reach back whenever he needed answers to the multitude of questions that arise in flying a spacecraft for the first time. “Certainly when I became the commander of Starliner, there were things that I knew I wanted the NESC to have purview over.” In its support of the Commercial Crew Program, the NESC not only assisted in the lead-up to the flight, but helped troubleshoot propulsion issues it experienced on its way to ISS and with the plans to bring the crew home. “The NESC obviously has been a big help in all organizations,” Wilmore added. “I think that the role it plays is vital, and I wish it was larger.”
Scott Tingle
NESC Chief Astronaut 2020-2022
Scott Tingle was selected in June 2009 to the astronaut corps, serving as a flight engineer and U.S. Operational Segment Lead for Expedition 54/55, where he spent 168 days aboard the ISS. His training for spaceflight involved many discussions about the Columbia accident. “We debriefed it 100 times,” he said. “When we’re talking safety issues—Apollo, Challenger, Columbia—they always come up, and there are always really good lessons learned.”
With his naval aviation and engineering background, Tingle said it didn’t take him long to get a feel for how the NESC worked. “They really get their fingers on the pulse of operations, which is what I think is one of the high value things they do.” When it came to filling in engineering gaps, Tingle liked having the NESC to lean on, “not only because of their engineering perspective, but because it’s independent. They’re not involved in the politics and everything that goes with it. And they have the end user and the operators in their heart and soul,” said Tingle. “This is the product that you get out of the NESC. It’s just a huge value because of that.”
“Having folks able to dive into the technicals, it really helps us. And it doesn’t just help us, it helps the crew, it helps the program, it helps the contractors, it helps our technical authorities. It helps everybody just to have people with that capability.”
He remembers when the NESC ramped up material testing to address an issue the astronaut corps was working. “They were able to get results very quickly. They really do fill the gap when it needs to be filled. They help us catch the things that we can’t catch.”
Being an astronaut was always on Tingle’s career agenda, and that obsession was deeply rooted at an early age. “I remember watching on TV Neil Armstrong stepping out onto the moon. I was four years old at the time, and me and my mom were watching in our living room.”
In a way, that is part of what he thinks makes the NESC so valuable. “They have not forgotten their roots. They haven’t forgotten the users who actually use this equipment and the value of the overall human spaceflight community.”
Sometimes that value is only seen in hindsight. “When we finally get up and running with all of these vehicles, I think you’re going to be able to go back and list all of these actions the NESC supported and how they helped provide critical information. You’re going to end up seeing that, ‘Wow, this was really transformational. This really helped us with our overall direction. It helped us be successful,’ ” Tingle said. “I’m honored to have been a part of it.”
Mark Vande Hei
NESC Chief Astronaut 2023-present
“I think the fact that NASA’s been willing to invest the talent and the resources to have an organization that can do a really deep dive with a second, third, fifth set of eyes, with the best technical experts and the perspective of knowing what’s going on across NASA, is a hugely beneficial thing,” said Mark Vande Hei, the current NESC Chief Astronaut.
Relatively new to the organization, he’s been getting up to speed. “I’ve already seen programs like the ISS repeatedly pull in NESC expertise to help out.” In his own experience, he sought NESC advice to help understand the risk posture associated with batteries. “I knew it was something we could fix, but it was going to cost money. And so the emphasis was on ‘how risky is this? Can we accept this risk?’ ” Help from the NASA Technical Fellow for Electrical Power helped him make decisions on what avenues to pursue.
He also asked the NESC to convey the risks associated with leaks in the Russian PrK module. “I wanted to have both sides hear directly what the other’s perspective was. I was impressed with the NESC’s professionalism,” said Vande Hei, in discussing a topic that has been controversial at times. “In addition to their technical skills, there’s an impressive interpersonal skill set that comes along with the folks on the NESC, too.”
Having already spent more than 500 days in space, Vande Hei is focused on the next generation. “There are a lot of other people who haven’t flown yet, and we need to get them to space because they’ll still be around when we’re doing much more challenging missions to the Moon and Mars. And they need to get the experience to be ready for those things much more than I do.” Even today, Vande Hei said the emotions he goes through when he watches astronauts launch, “I’m a mess. It’s rough, but it’s great. I call it ‘horribly amazing.’”
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Today, 22 years in and with nearly 1,400 assessments behind it, the NESC has won the respect of the programs and projects it supports, and some of it was earned with the help of its astronaut liaisons. “They helped us prove we could add value to NASA missions and bring new perspectives to their technical problems,” said Wilson. “We keep a photograph of the Columbia crew in the NESC office, but our astronaut liaisons are living, breathing reminders of why we do this work.”
Pat Forrester, now retired from NASA, considers his time with the NESC well spent. “You always want to be able, if there is an accident, to look at the remaining family and let them know you did everything that could be done. The amount of involvement the NESC has is limited only by funds and people, so I know how hard everyone works on those assessments,” he said. “I appreciated it so much when I was in that role where I felt like I was carrying a lot of the burden.”
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Meagan Chappell
