NASA veteran Geyer is picked to helm Johnson Space Center
NASA veteran Mark Geyer will take the helm of Houston’s Johnson Space Center next week when former astronaut Ellen Ochoa retires from the director position, agency officials confirmed Monday.
Geyer, an Indiana native who has been with the agency for about 28 years, will be the 12th director of Houston’s center, home to the nation’s astronaut corps where human space flight research and training take place. Johnson had a budget of $4.5 billion in fiscal year 2017 and employs about 10,000 civil service and contractor employees. “I think Mark is the perfect choice to be center director,” said Michael Coats, who served as Johnson’s director from 20052012. “He’s smart as can be and very calm in his deliberations.”
Geyer, 59, currently works out of the agency’s Washington, D.C., office, where he provides direc-
tion for NASA’s human spaceflight exploration mission. But prior to that Geyer served as Ochoa’s deputy center director at Johnson from 2015 until September 2017.
He was appointed by Jim Bridenstine, the new NASA administrator, who said in a statement that Geyer is “eminently qualified” for the position.
“Mark brings with him almost three decades of distinguished NASA leadership experience at the program, center and headquarters levels — he’s managed and he’s worked his way through the ranks and knows what it’s going to take to get our astronauts back to the moon and on to Mars,” Bridenstine said.
On Twitter Monday evening, Ochoa praised Geyer’s “thoughtful leadership, technical expertise and commitment to innovation and inclusion.”
“I have worked closely with Mark for many years, as he served as a program manager and my deputy director,” Ochoa tweeted, adding that he is “an excellent leader for the home of human spaceflight.”
Geyer will officially assume the director’s role May 25, Ochoa’s last day after 30 years with the agency. He becomes director of NASA’s human space flight hub just as President Donald Trump’s administration has renewed the nation’s push for human exploration to the moon and beyond.
Calm leadership
Geyer started his NASA career in 1990 as a systems engineer at the Houston center, but the young Hoosier quickly rose up the ranks within the space agency.
Four years later, he joined the International Space Station Program. There he served in a variety of roles, including a negotiator with Russia for space station plans and requirements.
Geyer had a number of other jobs in the agency, but Coats knows his work best as manager of the Orion program, which aims to eventually transport humans to Mars.
Geyer stepped into that role in 2007, when the agency’s future was uncertain.
At the time, Orion was part of NASA’s Constellation Program, a brainchild of the George W. Bush administration that aimed to send astronauts back to the moon as a stepping stone for Mars.
In 2010, President Barack Obama ended the program as too costly and inefficient. Ultimately, he spared Orion as a next generation capsule for Mars missions.
Geyer’s calm leadership during that time was exactly what Johnson needed, Coats said.
“I hope to see the same calm leadership in this role that he showed during that period of uncertainty,” he added.
Since Trump took office, there’s been a shift back toward Bush’s initial vision.
Trump’s $19.9 billion proposed budget for the next fiscal year tasks NASA with launching an uncrewed Orion flight by 2021, following by a launch of Americans around the moon in 2023. NASA officials hope to launch the uncrewed flight in December 2019, but that will likely slip to June 2020 in part because of construction delays with the SLS rocket.
“The Johnson Space Center has unique capabilities that are critical to NASA’s ability to execute our mission to take humans farther into the solar system, and I look forward to working with each and every one of you on the ambitious tasks ahead,” Geyer said in a statement Monday.
Big shoes to fill
In January, Ellen Ochoa quietly announced to her Johnson colleagues that it was time to try new things. She would be retiring in May, she said, after 30 years with the agency.
“It’s a really tough decision to determine when to make that transition; for me, it comes down to my personal situation,” she wrote in an email to employees. “We’ll move to Boise, ID, and I intend to be involved with a number of activities that interest me (including getting back to playing flute, which I once considered for a career!)”
Ochoa, a California native, first joined NASA in 1988 as a research engineer. By 1993, she became the first Hispanic woman to go to space, logging almost 1,000 hours in orbit over the course of four space shuttle flights.
When she was named director of the Houston center in 2012, she became the first Latina and only second woman to command that role.
“I look forward to watching as Houston continues to lead human exploration,” Ochoa said Monday.
Also via Twitter on Monday, Herb Baker, who retired last year from NASA, said “Ellen will be greatly missed but Mark has been deputy director and I can’t think of a better person for that job.”
As center director, Ochoa oversees the nation’s astronaut corps, the Orion program and mission operations for the International Space Station, among other things. Next week, she will pass those batons over to Geyer.
“It’s an honor to be appointed to lead the men and women of this proud center,” Geyer said.