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Goddard Engineering and Technology Directorate

FDF Welcomes 2021 Astronaut Class

In 2021, astronaut candidates visit the Flight Dynamics Facility.
On October 3, 2023, the 2021 Astronaut Candidate (ASCAN) Class, also known as ‘The Flies,’ visited Goddard Space Flight Center and toured the many unique aspects that GSFC provides to NASA as a whole. This tour included a visit to the Flight Dynamics Facility.

On October 3, 2023, the 2021 Astronaut Candidate (ASCAN) Class, known as ‘The Flies,’ visited Goddard Space Flight Center and toured the many unique groups and facilities that the Center provides to NASA as a whole. This ASCAN Class is made up of the brave men and women who will fly on Artemis missions, dock with the Gateway space station, and land on the moon. 

The Flight Dynamics Facility (FDF) Director, Sam Schreiber, hosted a tour of the facility and spoke about the unique mission-critical support that the FDF provides for Artemis and the Commercial Crew Program. 

Specifically, Sam spoke about not only the critical launch, on-orbit, and reentry support that the FDF provides to the SLS and Orion, but also the pre-mission analyses that the FDF performs in case of launch aborts. These analyses determine an operations concept to maintain communications should an Artemis mission require a launch abort, be it in the middle of the Atlantic or an abort to orbit.

FDF analysts first developed this pre-launch abort analysis concept for the Commercial Crew Program (CCP) in support of both Starliner and Crew Dragon capsules. Due to the critical nature of this analysis, FDF personnel were also tasked with providing similar work for the Artemis Program, which represents an order-of-magnitude increase in complexity from the original scenario. The procedures and tools that the FDF developed for this support ensure near-continuous communications with the crew via the TDRS satellites with Mission Control in Houston.

The FDF was proud to have the opportunity to connect with the future astronauts of the 2021 ASCAN Class, discussing the ways that FDF mission support is critical to ensuring that the astronauts and their vehicles will be able to communicate with antennas back on Earth.