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''RELEASE 18-079''  '''NASA Names Holly Ridings New Chief Flight Director''' 

On Sept. 17, 2018, NASA named Holly Ridings its new chief flight director, making her the first woman to lead the elite group that directs human spaceflight missions from the Mission Control Center at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

NASA has named Holly Ridings its new chief flight director, making her the first woman to lead the elite group that directs human spaceflight missions from the Mission Control Center at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Director of Flight Operations Brian Kelly selected Ridings to replace Norm Knight, who has held the position since 2012. Knight now is the deputy director of Flight Operations.

"Holly has proven herself a leader among a group of highly talented flight directors,” Kelly said. “I know she will excel in this unique and critical leadership position providing direction for the safety and success of human spaceflight missions. She will lead the team during exciting times as they adapt to support future missions with commercial partners and beyond low-Earth orbit.”

In her new role, Ridings will manage the group of 32 active flight directors and flight directors-in-training who oversee a variety of human spaceflight missions involving the International Space Station, including integrating American-made commercial crew spacecraft into the fleet of vehicles servicing the orbiting laboratory, as well as Orion spacecraft missions to the Moon and beyond.

Ridings, a native of Amarillo, Texas, earned a Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering from Texas A&M University in 1996. She joined NASA in 1998 as a flight controller in the thermal operations group.

She was selected as a flight director in 2005. Since then, she has served as the lead flight director for several missions including International Space Station mission Expedition 16 in 2007-2008, Space Shuttle Program mission STS-127 in 2009, and the first SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft mission to the space station in 2012.

Learn more about what flight directors do with our Everything About Mission Control Houston video featuring Flight Director Mary Lawrence.



''MEDIA ADVISORY M18-139''   '''NASA Hosts Science Chat on Upcoming Historic Planetary Encounter'''

Members of NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft team will host a Science Chat at 1 p.m. EDT Wednesday, Sept. 19, on humanity’s farthest planetary flyby, scheduled to occur Jan. 1 when the spacecraft encounters a mysterious object in the Kuiper Belt nicknamed “Ultima Thule.” 

The Sept. 19 event will be livestreamed from the New Horizons Mission Operations Center at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. It will air on Facebook Live, NASA Television, Ustream, YouTube and the agency's website.

The conversation will cover a range of topics, including the preparations, plans and goals for exploring Ultima. The encounter will occur approximately 4 billion miles from Earth, complementing the discoveries still coming from the mission’s July 2015 flight through the Pluto system, during which the spacecraft provided the first close-up images of Pluto and its moons, collecting data that has transformed our understanding of our solar system’s outer frontier.For the upcoming flyby,the mission team is planning to come three times closer to Ultima than it did Pluto.

Participants in the Science Chat include:

*Jim Green, chief scientist, NASA Headquarters, Washington 
*Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator, Southwest Research Institute, Boulder Colorado
*Alice Bowman, New Horizons mission operations manager, APL

The public can ask questions on Twitter using the hashtag #askNASA or by leaving a comment on the stream of the event on the New Horizons Facebook page. Media may submit questions before and during the event by emailing JoAnna Wendel at joanna.r.wendel@nasa.gov