Certified, Baby!

After a whirlwind of a week and a half, and after working 4 years to get here, I am officially a certified flight controller! FAO (Flight Activities Officer) is my name, flight planning is my game.

On Wednesday (3/5), I had my final certification simulation for FAO. For those of you who don't know what that means: A set of the space shuttle flight controllers get corralled into the mission control center main room ("White Flight Control Room" - WFCR) and pretend they are working a day in a specified mission. We "simulate" a real day on orbit. There are astronauts playing along, as well as my fellow flight controllers, a Flight Director (see "Ed Harris" in Apollo 13) and a training person. Three people evaluate my performance: a certified FAO (my group lead), a separate Flight Director there just for me (in addition to the one actually working the simulation) and a training person - all of them watching my every move and interaction and critiquing me the whole way! The purpose of any simulation (or "sim" as we call it) is to give us the opportunity to practice our skills at flight controlling, our system knowledge, and how we react to failures our systems or the orbiting vehicle might have. We practice a lot of worst-case scenarios so that when it comes to the real deal during a mission, we can be ready!

So, the sim commenced and after 9 hours of grueling work and some sweat, the sim was over and I was certified! Yay for me! 4 years of hard work has finally paid off. I might get the chance to stretch my FAO legs on this upcoming mission launching on 3/11, but my "official" start date for FAO-ing will be on the STS-124/1J mission slated to launch on May 25, 2008. So, the next time you see me on NASA TV (or the back of my head, at least :), I will be most-likely working alone, certified to sit up there alone and run the show!

Thanks to everyone for their best wishes on my quest to get certified :D