Houston, we have a podcast.

Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center,

episode 187, the view from Mission Control.

I'm Pat Ryan.

On this podcast, we talk with scientists, engineers, astronauts, all kinds of

experts about their part in America's space exploration program. Today we're going to give

you a peek at the operation of the International Space Station

flight control room.

Every single American space flight with an astronaut on board, starting with Freedom 7 in

1961, has been run by a team of specialists in a mission

control center which has been located here in Houston since 1965. Rather than

make astronauts responsible for coordinating all the aspects of a space flight

while they are flying it, engineers with expertise and all the relevant systems work together in one location to move a mission toward its goals.

A team is on console in the flight control room any time there is an American mission in space,

which has been the case since the launch of the first element of the

International Space Station in 1998 and the arrival on orbit of the first permanent

crew a little more than 20 years ago.

And NASA has sponsored a series of panel discussions

in recognition of that 20th anniversary of continuous human presence on the station.

We brought you the first of those, our episode 184 last month, and

today we bring you a talk focused on the work done by Mission Control Houston. The moderator

is NASA Public Affairs Specialist Brandy Dean from the Johnson Space Center. The Deputy Director of Flight Operations here at JSC, Norm Knight.

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