CLEVELAND — 3News' Betsy Kling recently had the opportunity to sit down with Vanessa Wyche, the Director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center, to talk about the next steps in human space flight.
Vanessa Wyche told 3News’ Betsy Kling, in NASA problems don’t care if you wear a skirt or pants, they just need to be solved. And her team is solving some of the big problems with human space flight.
Here is part of their conversation.
Vanessa Wyche:
“We consider ourselves to be the hub of human space exploration because we have the astronauts who are actually the ones that go into space. And then we have people that are designing, building, new spacecraft. All the while, we're doing things in what we call low-Earth orbit. So that's the International Space Station circling the Earth, 250 miles above, every day, all day long. To doing deep space exploration. So, we've been working on our Artemis program, and under Artemis will be going to the moon. And then on to Mars.”
Betsy Kling:
“You see the resounding success of Artemis I and Orion coming back and the splashdown. What did we learn from that? What about the human factor in that Artemis mission?”
Vanessa Wyche:
“For Artemis I, it was just that just what you said, making sure that we could go deeper into space than we ever been before. So now what we're doing with Artemis II, we have to outfit it with all the environmental systems. We didn't do that because we didn't have astronauts on board on Artemis I. All those things are being added. Those systems are being added right now, today.”
Betsy Kling:
“When did you get bit by the engineering bug? What's your background in this?”
Vanessa Wyche:
“Oh my gosh. I did get, you know, exposed to science in my classes. And then, one Christmas my brother got a chemistry set, and I was his apprentice. And I got to do experiments with him, and it just got me very excited about science in general.”
Betsy Kling:
“What are you excited about?”
Vanessa Wyche:
“I cannot tell you what it was like to go into Mission Control and in one flight control room, we had flight controllers that were controlling the International Space Station, working and making sure that all the experiments were going on. And then in another flight control room, they were controlling the Orion spacecraft. Both of those things were going on simultaneously. I felt like I was walking on cloud nine, and I can't wait to have that feeling again.
Wyche credits her mentors and her brother for helping with her career path through NASA.
Thanks to the International Women's Air and Space Museum for hosting the conversation.
You can watch the full conversation with Wyche below: