Port native heads NASA commercial crew program

Port Washington native Mike Hess has been promoted to operations integration manager for NASA’s commercial crew program.

The program is working to safely fly astronauts to the International Space Station on spacecrafts being built by SpaceX and Boeing. It will replace the past practice of the U.S. paying Russia for seats on Soyuz spacecraft.

Hess served as the NASA launch manager during the SpaceX Dragon static fire in January at Kennedy Space Center and as NASA operations manager at Mission Control in Houston for the SpaceX Demo-1 flight in March.

Hess most recently served as acting associate center director at Johnson Space Center, and before that was the division chief for the space medicine operations organization.

Hess began working for NASA as a cooperative employment student at Johnson Space Center in 1989.

Throughout his career, he has served in a wide variety of positions at NASA and has earned the NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal, Silver Snoopy Award and Johnson Control Center Director’s Commendation.

Hess earned bachelor of science degrees in aerospace and mechanical engineering from the University of Michigan and an executive master of business administration degree from the Naval Postgraduate School.

He is also a graduate of the Program and Project Management Development Program and the Harvard University Senior Executive Fellows Program.