Ep387_MCC_Eye_of_the_Storm

Ep387_MCC Eye of the Storm Leah Cheshier Houston, we have a podcast. Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center, episode 387, Mission Control, Eye of the Storm. I'm Leah Cheshire, and I'll be your host today. On this podcast, we bring in the experts, scientists, engineers and astronauts, all to let you know what's going on in the world of human space flight and more. We are continuing to dive into our Mission Control Houston series, highlighting the home base of NASA's human space flight operations, which monitors and controls the International Space Station all day every day, for over 25 years. This is the last episode in the series we've dedicated to exploring the roles within Mission Control and the International Space Station Flight Control Room. Today, we're breaking down two console positions that you've probably heard of, Flight Director, Garrett Hehn and Capcom, or capsule communicator, Amy Dill. These positions are two of the most recognizable in Mission Control. The flight director is responsible for leading teams of flight controllers, research and engineering experts and support personnel around the world, and making the real time decisions critical to keeping NASA astronauts safe in space. Capcom is the sole voice communicating with the crew, taking inputs from all aforementioned consoles, back rooms and other experts, and relaying updates, instructions and information to the astronauts we're tackling. How these roles work, the expertise needed to join the ranks and the importance of teamwork and gathering all inputs. Flight, I'm taking over your job just this once. Recorders to flight speed! Capcom? Amy Dill Go. Leah Cheshier Flight? Garrett Hehn Go. Leah Cheshier We are go for Houston We Have a Podcast! <Intro Music> Leah Cheshier All right. Amy Dill, Garrett Hehn, thank you both so much for joining me today. We are really excited to have you on Houston. We have a podcast. We're going to break down a little bit about both of your roles in Mission Control Houston, specifically the International Space Station flight control room. So Garrett, we'll start with you. What's your role inside MCC How long have you been with NASA? Garrett Hehn Thanks for having me, Leah. I'm super excited to be here. I've been with NASA almost 11 years. The past two and a half I've been at the flight console. I started in the topo group, which is the trajectory experts, and the first time I got to work in the room, I recognized that that was the most fun part of the job, being part of the team. It's such a dynamic place to be, and I kind of set my sights on being the leader of the team, and having that opportunity over the past two and a half years has been incredible. Leah Cheshier Fantastic. Amy, how about you tell us about your role in the International Space Station Flight Control Room, how long you've been with NASA and what brought you to be a flight controller. Amy Dill Sure, also happy to be here. Leah, I am a Capcom that stands for capsule communicator, and my job in Mission Control is to be the single voice of the team to the crew for anything we need them to do, to support them in their day, and then also to be the advocate in mission control for the crew, bringing forth crew perspective and spreading that among the flight control team members. I've been with NASA for 16 years, and to talk about where it led me to become a flight control we have to go way back to the 90s. Go back when I was 12 years old. I saw the movie Apollo 13, and I saw, you know, the mission control. And I said, That's what I want to do. I want to work for NASA and Mission Control. And here I am. It's absolutely incredible. It's been a really wonderful adventure. Leah Cheshier Oh my goodness. I That's so amazing to, number one, be inspired by the movie and enough so that it sets your career path and then to actually pursue and achieve it. That's amazing. Yeah, it's pretty cool. So, Garrett, what about you? What's your background like? How did you how did you end up at the flight console before you were even a topo, Garrett Hehn right, right? I joined NASA straight from college, which is actually a pretty typical route, right? We've got a lot of nights and weekends to work, and young people are great for those. But seriously, it's also we've got a really good training program. And so I had in college, I was a member of the swim team, and I think that sort of team experience and the communication skills required for that. I was an athlete for the first two years, and then I was a coach for the second two and that kind of allowed me to looking back. Was a great testing ground to figure out what my leadership looks like, and developing that authentic leadership. Once I was with the topos, I had opportunities for several leads, and that's really how I distinguished myself and showed the qualities required to be a flight director. Leah Cheshier So we talked a little bit about the Capcom role and what Amy does on console. What does the flight director do for console? You? I mean, you are kind of over everybody. Garrett Hehn The simplest of. Description is to lead the team. We like to also say, kind of break it down as the only thing I need to do my job is have the timeline, have a stopwatch and a headset, and I'll kind of break those down. The timeline really is a visualization of everything that's going on, from all the nitty gritty pieces to the larger perspective of what we're trying to do in the next couple weeks. And that gives me priorities, right? That lets me cues me in on which teams are working really, really hard right now, who's in the critical path. And then the stopwatch is really the reality that the timeline never goes reality never matches the timeline, and it's always going to deviate in some way. And so that's a good way for me to keep track of what's my most precious resource, which is time. Often I'm making the decision between two things, with the limiting factor being time. Do I have more time to get more data, or is this the best I'm going to have? Because ultimately, in operations, what I think is so fascinating is you have imperfect information, you never have the full story, and then ultimately, the headset is the most important piece, because I rely on my team members to Provide me the data to make good risk decisions, right? You know, again, if when you have imperfect information, we have that fog of what's really going on in the moment, it's critical that you can have folks that help you see through and see through, through the landscape, right? And ultimately, to keep moving forward, sometimes you gotta accept, accept some risk, right? And so our communication as a team is how I gather that and then ultimately advertise a decision and set the direction for the team. Wow, Leah Cheshier thank you. That's a really great summary of the flight director console. So what were your degrees? Amy, what did you did you study in college? Amy Dill I studied aeronautical and astronautical engineering. Okay, Garrett Hehn how about you? Garrett, similar, different. Name, aerospace engineering got it. It's Leah Cheshier all engineering to me. So beyond your personal histories, what are other ways that people can get involved into or eventually become a Capcom or a flight director? Does everybody study some sort of engineering? Or are there other paths Garrett Hehn I can start, I, you know, to be a member of the flight control team. We're looking for those STEM degrees, and then to become a flight director. Has the vast majority have been folks that we've selected from within the team itself. But we're trying to cast a wider net and take advantage of the fact that NASA is no longer the only game in town that does space operations, right, which I think is really important for the ultimate success of our our mission to explore. And so over the past couple classes, we've had folks that Paul Tanya had military experience that was very similar. Nicole McElroy was at Virgin orbit and Dane Trujillo was running one of the Mars Rovers. So the commonality, besides, you know, they had the same skills that we see in our team members, in terms of being able to lead a team in a time critical situation, Leah Cheshier that's fascinating, and it's been interesting to see those different perspectives be brought in every time we bring in a new flight director class. I love reading the biographies and seeing where people come from. And you're right, there is so much more aerospace experience now, or space flight experience. I should say that I think we're really going to benefit from it, not just at the flight director console, but across all of Mission Control and everything we do. Amy, how about you? What are some other paths to Capcom? I know this used to really just be an astronaut role. Amy Dill Yeah, it was. So when I saw that movie Apollo 13, when I was 12, all capcoms were astronauts, and I didn't think that was going to be something accessible to me, but I'd say in the early 2000s they started bringing in what we call engineer capcoms, which were people that had either worked in mission control or had done a lot of crew training, had a lot of experience with the crew perspective. And they tried out a couple of folks to be Capcom on ISS, and it worked really well. So our capcoms are a really a great diverse population of astronauts, engineer capcoms, most of which have worked in mission control or done crew training here at NASA. And then also we have folks who come over from the military here for a detail, and they'll become capcoms. And it really leads to a great diversity of thought on our team, which I really enjoy. Leah Cheshier I feel like I would be very nervous to really be that single voice from mission control to the crew on the International Space Station. Is that a lot of pressure? Do you feel that sometimes, Amy Dill not really, because you're doing a job, and I've done a couple other different roles in Mission Control. I've been a Cronus before that. I was a role that doesn't even exist anymore, called Odin. I've worked on the Orion side in mission control as well. So you kind of just are used to that environment, and it's a job that you do, and you don't really think a lot about your voice going out. To the world until you're on a podcast talking about it. But I'd say the job itself is really more listening than talking. Yeah, I'm listening to, you know, what the crew is asking, interpreting what they're what they're taught, what they're asking or calling down about as well. Because sometimes, you know they may be, they may be asking for something, and you kind of need to read between the lines, or understand the context of why they're asking, and then also listening to the flight control team and their communications, to the flight director about, you know, we need this, we need the crew to do this, or we need to tell them this, or this is going on, and kind of picking up all the little pieces of communication so you're listening and then figuring out a way to put that together in a together in a really good, concise, cohesive package to tell the crew. Leah Cheshier And I think it's probably a lot of trust for your team as well. You know all the other team members that are providing you the information to share with the crew. So definitely having having the help on the ground help? Amy Dill Yeah, absolutely. And I think a lot of the flight control team tries to phrase their communications in a way the crew will understand, which makes my job a lot easier, right? I always appreciate Garrett Hehn and my job is way easier whenever I have a lot of trust in the Capcom, right? Because they can be such a huge help of being keyed in to I liked Amy, how you said it of the context and what the crew is experiencing, because sometimes on the ground we can, we can get balled up and solving a technical problem, and ultimately lose sight of that if we're not careful. Leah Cheshier Well, how do you get to this point once you're at NASA, once you've been selected for this role? I know that it's not really just stepping into the job and going and sitting on the console. I mean, we did a portion of the flight controller training when we start as PAOs, the ones who sit on console, and I know that it really continues for y'all for years, that sometimes after that, doing Sims and back room training and support like that. So what does that path look like for a Capcom? We'll start with you Amy Amy Dill Yeah, so I'll say I'm still training. I've been certified as a Capcom for three years, and I had a class this morning. Oh, so the learning doesn't stop. I learned something when I'm on console or in a simulation. I learn something every day. But for Capcom training, we kind of have three pieces to it. One is some self study, book book learning, reading on online training, both from a from a technical perspective, also from just kind of understanding capcoms role in the flight control team and Flight Operations Directorate in general. And then we also do simulations, which is great, and we have a very strong mentorship of certified capcoms that will sit with our trainees and provide real time feedback on how their calls are, how they're interacting with the flight director and the team also provide written feedback. So simulations really are a big part of our training in terms of learning how to do the Capcom job, because it is a very different way of thinking compared to other flight control disciplines. I imagine flight directors, similar thing. It's a very different way of thinking from from other flight control systems and support controllers. And then the final piece is the real time we because you really have to, you have to learn by doing. For Capcom, we also have training with real time, what we call hot seat on the job training, where you have a mentor with you, and you were actually talking to the crew and helping them with their day, but getting feedback from from the flight director and from your mentor on how that's going, just because the real time environments very different from the simulation environment, sure, and Sims, you know, the station we throw the kitchen sink in, you know, because we need to be able to deal with the with uncertain things that happen in real time. So we put a lot of failures in and sim, so we get that training and that ability to to to execute no matter what, you know, keep going forward, but in real time. Ideally, it's a nice, quiet day. We're just talking about stowage a lot, oh my gosh. And, you know, just off the cuff questions that aren't related to failures, that are more about timeline execution. So you kind of have to have both as a Capcom. Leah Cheshier Nice. So, Garrett, what about you? What's the path to flight director look like? Especially, I mean, as you came in as a topo, you know you did, I'm sure, back room training Sims, things like that, as a topo, but when you are then selected to be a flight director, it's about a one year training timeline. Is that correct? Garrett Hehn That's correct. Yep, it takes about a year. And I think it's like Amy was saying it's a transition, especially for someone that took my path to go from the team to leading the team. And I asked Chief of the Office at the time was Holly Ridings when we got selected, and I asked her, What's the hardest thing for someone along this path? And she said, It's dealing with your own previous console, your own experience, right? Because you can go one of two ways. You can pretend that you're still, in my case, a topo, right? And you knew everything that you know, but the reality is, the minute you stepped out of the office, they started evolving, right? They were learning, they were pushing the envelope forward, and you are no longer as current as you think you are. And so that can lead to the you know, you are no longer that technical expert, right? And you need to come to terms with that at the same time. You can't just have blind trust, because it's, oh, I sat next to that person for 10 years, right? I know what they're talking about, right? So it's a little microcosm of this transition of when you're becoming the leader, how do you develop the ability to stay above the fray, to provide enough thinking space for yourself, to make good decisions, and also key in and on? How well do we really understand what's going on here, right? And a lot of my training is just to be a generalist, right? I think of the ultimate goal at the end of that, it's about seven months or so of classes, the end of that, is to be smart enough to ask the right question, okay? Because ultimately, one of the people teaching me that class, same type of person, is going to be in the room with me at that time, right? So it would be a shame if I just thought my old classroom knowledge was enough and just going from that right? It's a lot about, how do I get that right question out? How do I make sure that we're seeing the same situation the same way and the path forward, and then acting upon that we similarly, like all the disciplines. You're going to have a simulation, a series of simulations. At the end. I, like Tommy said, it is very much the kitchen sink. It is a lot of reps right to practice. That ability of is my team giving me the right information to make the right decision. And then ultimately, that culminates, much like all the other disciplines, where there's a flight director beside them for the evaluation, and in my cast, in my case, it'll be the chief of the flight director office. So right now, that's Emily Nelson, who has the most shifts on console of any flight director. So that certainly comes with a little pressure in that moment, and knowing that you know she's seen just about every every case we can think of in a sim. But similarly, once you proceed off that there is a there's a hot seat time, there's a time to see it in real life with someone beside you, because all of the discussions in real time, every shift of just over 100 that I've had for ISS and every shift has some unique something, something that I can take away and hopefully be better next time. Leah Cheshier I love that point that you made, and to me, it's kind of about humility. Of you do these seven months of classes, and so you probably do know a lot. I mean, you become a generalist, but it's sort of like the topo thing. You're not as ingrained in ADCO, the attitude control console, as they are. Even though you may know a lot about it, it's better to know the question to ask them than to assume it yourself exactly, exactly such good advice, I think, for life in general, and working on a team, Garrett Hehn absolutely. Yeah. I think it's incumbent upon the leader to set their teams up for success, right? And that's what I think of it in that moment. Leah Cheshier So let's move into a little bit about mission mindedness. We've talked about training and Sims. How do your two consoles interact during a mission? I think it's almost incessant communication. You're sitting right next to each other. Can you kind of give us an example? Amy Dill Yeah, it's interesting. Because I think when people think of Mission Control, they think of all the audio loops that all the different flight controllers are talking to and flight and Capcom are listening to all those, you know, listening to a lot of loops. But when we communicate, we mostly are just talking to each other over the airwaves. And I think sometimes it's just even getting on the same page or comparing notes, because maybe flights been off working something that's more vehicle or mission related or risk related. And I'm focusing on what the crew is doing, where, where are they in station? What are they working on? Are they ahead or behind the timeline flights looking at that as well. But flights got a lot more to do than Capcom does. Sometimes fight will be, will turn to, you know, we'll turn to Capcom and say, hey, you know where, where is so and so on this activity, and that's my job to kind of keep track of. And then everything that I say on the space to grounds is technically approved in a way by flight. And I don't talk to the crew without flights, either, kind of talking to flight before I say something to the crew, or flights not or acknowledgement. Yeah, you can go, you can go up with that. So I think that's important, because it's good to have two people kind of vetting what I'm about to say flight's not necessarily telling me you need to say exactly this, right? Not necessarily telling flight I'm going to say exactly this, but an idea of what we what we're going to tell the crew, um, trying to think what else? Garrett Hehn Oh, I like that a lot. I think I'm going to go back to what you said earlier about trust, right? And I think there's a lot of trust between the flight and Capcom console, and the more trust there is, the more effective we are as a team. I like to touch base with any Capcom I haven't worked with before, and because I know all flight directors are humans, there's all little particularities to each of us. And for me, it's a lot of body language, right? So I know being. On shift with Amy, that Amy is able to read my body language where I feel like the discussion amongst the ground team has reached the right conclusion. I don't have anything to add, and she has gathered what needs to be said. And it's a thumbs up, it's a nod, it's a kind of waving of my hand upward of, hey, let's go. Like, let's keep it moving right. And that's just one of those many little ways where we can gain efficiency, and makes me really excited on a shift, right? Those are my favorite moments of like we're really grooving as a team, where Amy, I also have trust that Amy, if she doesn't think she's captured what the conclusion is or what the need is, that she's going to stop, right? Because there's, there's no taking it back once it's transmitted up into space, right? The astronaut has heard it, they have probably started acting, because they're similarly trying to get as much done as they can. And so we need to be really precise there. And I think the Capcom flight trust is what enables that, Amy Dill Yeah, and part of that trust too is sometimes I don't get it right. I mean, as a Capcom, sometimes we say something that's a little bit incorrect, and so flight will offer a correction, and the entire flight control team is listening. Anytime that we're talking on space to ground with crew, everybody's they don't drop everything necessarily, per se, but like, people stop talking and they listen. So if, for some reason, I say, you know, a piece of equipment wrong, or I didn't say the right piece of equipment, or I got, like, a number wrong, or a letter wrong, they'll voice that to the flight loop and, you know, we'll correct it so. But it is important to try to get things as right as possible. But we do have, we do have, I think, trust to to know that the team will speak up if Capcom doesn't get it right, which is important. Leah Cheshier I have some some questions about loops, and I want to break down for our listeners the loop. It's not a hierarchy, but it's structure. Yeah, it's something that is very hard to understand until you sit on console and listen to it. It was the most intimidating thing for me when I started sitting on console and just trying to discern what I should listen to and what I could punch off for a little bit. So you listen to a lot of loops to get the background to communicate to the crew. So do you wait on those teams to give you a breakdown in words? Or are you always listening? Sometimes you just wait for the breakdown. I mean, how do you inform what you structure to give a crew? Amy Dill Yeah, so actually, I would say, as a Capcom, I probably listen to fewer loops than I have as editing another flight control discipline one, because it's very important that I hear space to grounds. We have four US space to grounds. We also have some Russian space to grounds that we don't usually talk on. But as Capcom, I try to listen to the English translation just to know how the whole crew is doing. So and then I listen to the flight loop, which is kind of, I'd say the it's like the home loop. Yeah, it's like the main loop. I do have the ability to listen to other loops, like loop for the all the flight controllers. It's called FCR sys, FCR is Flight Control Room. Sys, systems. But I tend to wait till flight controllers bring a complete story to flight because if I hear something on a back room loop or an individual discipline loop, or even figure says that's preliminary, that can get set in my mind. And then if the story changes, when it comes to the flight loop, I have to make sure that I have gotten the new story. So I not all cap comes like that. Some of them like do like to listen to the back room loops. But for me personally, I just, I prefer to wait till something comes to the flight loop, and then I have the ability to ask questions. Sometimes I ask questions of the questions on the flight loop. Sometimes I'll, I'll ask flight, hey, what about this? And flight will ask the question on the flight for me. Or sometimes, if I need to get, like, a, you know, like a specific detail against I didn't catch it the first time, I'll call the discipline and be like, oh, you know, Hey, what is this? Did I get the serial number right? Is stoic? Is it? Is it this? Is it? This number? Yes. Okay, so yeah. Garrett Hehn I can add that it makes me very happy to hear how you see the flight loop, because to me, that shows kind of how some of the culture and the norms are so well entrenched amongst the team, yeah, that it ultimately makes my job so much easier, right? Because I'm taught the flight loop, nothing is official until I've made a decision on the flight loop. And the biggest problem we can have, or the fastest way we can get in trouble, is if people are on other loops, making decisions that I do not know of, and it sounds. So ultra controlling, right? When I say that, but it is, in reality, can be very, very quick and effective, because the flight loop also doesn't need to. We jokingly correct folks in training of sometimes they want to tell me, they want to give me the answer of how much to turn the bolt, and they start with when the Earth cooled. I don't need that, right? I have trust that there's some sort of analysis that was done. And you can give me a quick reference. We don't need to build up from first principles. So really that the flight loop is a precious resource, and how we quickly use that in management, manage that. So from a flight director's perspective, I could just listen to the flight loop, and again, the loops that Amy mentioned, of the communications to the crew, and usually in early in my training, I actually started with that, because it was my mentor had pointed out to me, it's a really good way to make sure that all the information has come out on the flight loop, and that you're not tricking yourself, that you actually heard it somewhere else. Now it's a little more advanced technique. I can know that situation or a problem is brewing, and I can tune in early so that when they come to me, especially if we have some near term time constraint, I can cut out some of the deeper explanation or my questions, right, by just tuning in earlier. But ultimately, sometimes there's just there's just not time, right? So I do rely on their ability to be really concise when they come up to the flight loop. Leah Cheshier That was kind of my next question is, how do you discern what to listen to? And so whenever you hear there might be something brewing, it's easier to punch up those conversations, because, like I said earlier, it's so it can be so overwhelming to have up your loops, and there are six completely different, completely unrelated conversations going on at one time, and half of them are not relevant. Half of them will get solved before they ever make it to the flight loop. You know, some of it's still good to know in case it pops up later, but, but, yeah, that's very interesting. Garrett Hehn I think it’s the flight controllers. Greatest party trick is we all learn to listen to six different things. Amy Dill Yeah, we're really great at parties. It's terrible. You'll be, like, talking to somebody, and then you'll turn and, like, interject into somebody else's conversation, because you were hearing both at the same time. And I know how we do it is Leah Cheshier It’s good multitasking. Garrett Hehn It is good multitasking. I think there's, there's tools that I use to help me, right? We set a standard that I try to impress on people, the need for if they are seeing a problem and working it, that first answer is okay to just say, this doesn't look right, and I'm taking a look flight. That's one of the cues of like, okay, I can process. Are they gonna have the right number of people? Do we have the right experts around so that they can actually solve this problem. How long do I have to solve this problem, right? So I can get a lot information out of that first call. And some of the action may be, let me punch up the loop that I think they're gonna they're gonna talk a little bit more about, and so that I can learn, I it's, it's the most fun part of the job at the flight console is that none of these decisions have like a formulaic response. They're always different. There's so many variables going into what am I going to trust someone to go execute, and how much of a go am I going to give? Right? Because goes can come in a lot of forms. They can be I want to take this single command and this action, but a lot of times that would be horribly slow if I had to approve every 10,000th command that comes through the room. So we've got procedures, right? We've got things we've set out, and a really good flight controller will kind of frame it so that they know the limits and the bounds to which they can confidently operate, and then they can get my input on those pieces that are right at the hairy edges, and then I can give the go that lets them just move forward, right? I have a good example from Monday, actually. So I was, I'm lead for SpaceX 31 which is a cargo mission that recently splashed down, and we were undocking and at the same time. Just, you know, I've got my flight specific team that's trained together, really knows each other, knows how to reach those efficiencies I talked about. But the reality is, we have no idea what the crew is going to be doing that day. And they can be one of many, many things. They're actually very, very little involvement in the undock itself. And so that day, we happen to be testing a new sensor that measures some of the critical things for some of our emergencies. It's some of the constituents if you had a fire, it's if we had an ammonia breach into the cabin. So this is a highly critical hardware coming right at the same time where we are trying to undock. And so in that moment, I knew I had a Capcom that I could trust and that the procedure was really, really well thought through of how they wanted to gather their data. I Amy Dill think I reviewed that procedure. Thank you. I was one of many. I was one of many good Garrett Hehn well, it paid off. It paid off for me big time, because I was able to turn to Capcom and be like, Listen, you are going to follow Don through this procedure. And. Work with ethos. Don's going to have some questions, because that's no matter how good our procedures are, there's always going to be some questions. And I trust you all to loop me in when you think you need more information, because I need to focus on the dynamic event. Leah Cheshier So We've talked a lot about loops and all the conversations that happen, how you listen in, how you discern what to listen to, but what to you is good communication etiquette on loops or in Mission Control. Garrett Hehn Hmm. I mean, there's the, the very basic level right of, there's the, you know, radio trucker sound of, everybody's got to know how to hail the person that they want to talk to. Yeah, right. You know flight Capcom, and that is saying flight first to get my attention, and then naming yourself of who you are. The skill that I think is the hardest to master is the four blank. So you want to give me, especially the flight director, when it's a tight resource, or same way with the crew, which you can speak to even more about, how do you give them just enough of what they're about to hear about? Because for me, I may need to decide I don't have time for that right now, and that's going to wait, because I have somebody else I need to talk to. And that sort of three, four words, choose them carefully, and that tries that really keys in how much attention and the criticality to it. Amy Dill Yeah. I mean, that definitely applies for the crew too, calling them, you know, for a specific crew member, or if it's related to something, maybe on their timeline, or for a general topic. So the crew can decide who's going to answer, because some we have a commander who will want to take calls that perhaps pertain to the overall state of the station or the mission and so, but maybe they're working out. So maybe it, maybe, maybe somebody else can take that call. So kind of giving an idea of what is, what am I calling about? I think timing is also really important, reading the room, reading, reading the crew, knowing, you know, are they busy? What are they what are they working on? Do they is this is what I'm calling about more important than what they're working on? Do I think it's more important? Or will they think it's more important? Um, so maybe you have something that you need to tell somebody, but it's not the right time, and maybe it can wait. I think that and that kind of leads into the, you know, calling for something, because I think particularly for a flight director like you had said earlier. Garrett, if a problem is a brewing, it's good to know early. But if you've got another big problem that you're working that's tough, because you want to know all the problems, big and small, but maybe not. I don't know that that's a hard one. I'm glad I don't have to deal with that one at the Capcom. But yeah, I think you know, trying to for calling the crew, trying to think about what they're doing right now what I'm calling about, do they need to know now? Or can I hold it until I talk to them next? Do I have something to tell them and they're really close to an audio terminal unit that's like, kind of like their telephone panel and the station that they can talk on, because if they're right by an ATU, I can catch them, if I see them in video, for example, or if they've got their hands full, not a good time for me to call them, because they're going to have to press a button and hold a button and talk on a microphone. So I think timing is everything, both for communication in the control center and communication up to the crew. Leah Cheshier That's great advice as somebody who also wants better communication, or wants to be a better communicator in Mission Control. So thank you both. We've talked a little bit about the back rooms that we have in Mission Control, both on this podcast and previous episodes in the series, but I don't know if either of you two really have back room counterparts, necessarily. Amy Dill no, no. The team is our back room. Yeah Garrett Hehn It functions that way. Flight has a unique other console that is sometimes staffed during really I called it dynamic events earlier, which is just an umbrella term for something that where the risk is inherently a little outside of the norm. So the undocking docking is a really good example, right? It's just a controlled car crash. Is just a docking, right? So you got some energy involved there that you want to be really particular about. And we will sometimes have a console that's just labeled FOD flight operations directorate, which is what we as flight controllers are all part of. And that'll be often a senior flight director. There's kind of a cohort of them within the office that have taken on this role, and they'll show up for that, and it's a really key function for me of if something in a time critical scenario is going wrong, there's going to be a lot of people outside Mission Control that have very valid questions, and they're going to need information, especially your program managers, your people that oversee these billion dollar projects. But I don't have time to talk to them. And so they are kind of that conduit, and in a way, sometimes a shield right to very helpfully, allow us the space to operate. They can also be a really good sounding board. So I've used it in the past, especially as you know, relatively new flight director, you can walk back to that console and just be like, Hey, this is the way I'm seeing the risk. You person who have seen this many, many times probably, is there any, is there a question I haven't asked? Is there a group that hasn't weighed in, and ultimately they're not there to direct me? I still have the authority in the in the flight console to do what we need to do, but I'd be kind of a fool to to waste that resource. Leah Cheshier Right. I mean, aside from not having back rooms. You know there, there is more than one flight director, there's more than one Capcom. So how do you share best practices or lessons learned with your counterparts? Garrett Hehn I’ll start with handover, because I think, I think that's part of it. Handover is that period where the next team is coming in, yeah, and we specifically make sure we overlap by an hour so that you can talk about everything. And each console is going to have their next shift coming in, and the flight directors have a practice of you write that up for the next person. You know, even the busiest of days, you should be able to get it onto one page, front, back. That's always the goal, right? Because you can't just overwhelm this person with here's everything that happened in the past eight hours. It's not really effective, and it's for that person, but we also just send it to the entire office, okay? And as someone in training, that is a great resource. We've got, you know, a more verbose log that can every minute talk about what we did, but this is a really good summary, and often the hard decisions are contained within that. So I as a trainee, I can learn from that, and then, as a person that didn't happen to be assigned that day for that situation, I can hopefully bring something out of that of how to be better myself in a similar situation. Leah Cheshier How about you Amy? do you all share anything like that? Amy Dill Yeah, we do have a quick console summary that every capcom sends out at the end of the day. So it covers both the very well for Houston, really morning, early morning slash also morning for crew shift, and then the afternoon slash daytime shift for Houston. And it kind of goes over big picture, what the crew worked on, anything that we still owe them from the end of the day in terms of questions they had or things that they needed, and any, anything that might be a heads up for capcoms in general. And we also, from a longer term beyond just a day, have a hand over log that kind of contains things that we've been tracking or best practices. And then I think a lot Capcom is just listen. They listen to we have the ability to listen to mission control from our desks, so we'll do that and just hear other people. It's really a gift to be able to hear other people work in Capcom, because we're all individuals. We have a little bit way of different ways of communicating with the crew, and even as a mentor, sometimes for trainees or people that are doing their hot seats, I'll be like, Wow, that was really nice. How you handled that call. So I'm always picking up tips from people. And then we also have an all hands meeting. It's kind of a gathering of capcoms we do at the beginning of the year every year, where we have an opportunity to have an open forum and talk about, you know, things, things that we've done that have gone well, or things that haven't necessarily gone well. So we try to try to communicate those types of things, and then also, with an annual training, be on the old hands to just refresh ourselves on best practices, which is important. I mean, you can learn something and you can practice it in Sims, and then you do it for a while, and it's good to refresh and kind of step back and examine the things that you learned in training and make sure you're still doing them. Leah Cheshier Well, let's spice it up a little bit. You get the call Houston, we've had a problem here, something unexpected happens. It could be a space suit issue. It could be erroneous data that you're getting. How do you handle that? How do you lock in and resolve a situation? Garrett Hehn I think as operators, again, one of the most important skills is this changing speeds and figuring out when it's important to move quickly and when to go slow, right? So hopefully, in that initial moment, you get some information of where is that throttle, how fast are we moving? And hopefully that call comes with some context, and we've got, you know, at the far end of that spectrum, you've got emergencies where we're using very specific words, so that the whole team kind of flips that switch immediately, right? And we're going to give a procedure name, not only to say this is what we're working on, but that immediately for the emergencies, every Council's got the emergency book, and that means every team member, even if you don't have a command in that emergency book, is opening that and you have it in front of you. So that's one extreme, right, but sometimes it's very nebulous, right? Because. Problems never present themselves as you think they will. So I think of the first step is, do we need information? Do we need what more do we need to know? Right? And that's where I can turn to a Capcom, and some of the really good ones will already have an idea of what they think we might need to know. So we're giving space for someone on the team to volunteer a question, or at least to say copy, as in, I heard it. I don't have anything yet, any thoughts yet, but that is a moment where I'll definitely turn to Capcom and see kind of what do you how much of the situation do you understand? Amy Dill Yeah, I think to build on that thinking, thinking of what what questions we should ask crew, or thinking of what questions crew may have about the situation, they may be like, we have this problem and we don't know what's going on, so trying to offer, if we have information, offer that information to crew to help them better understand what's going on. And then a lot of listening, I think, whenever any whenever you're approached with a problem, and like Garrett said, the problems are always not what you would expect or even have imagined. Yeah, those are the ones that are a bit stickier. So I think it is processing what the problem is coming up with, the questions about the problem, and then for Capcom, listening to what the team is piecing together to address the problem, either in terms of questions they want to ask crew, or what they want crew to do, or what we're going to do on the ground, and then me explain to crew what we're going to do on the ground. Right, Garrett Hehn right? I like that first step in keying on it, because I've been a part of teams. I've led teams, and made this mistake where, if you don't fully understand what you're dealing with up front, can spend many, many minutes solving a problem that is not the problem you have, and then you've just burned all that time. I think from that, once you know the problem, there is, you know, a helpful moniker. We are an acronym. Of course, it's an acronym, helpful acronym to kind of trigger folks of what to do next, and it's FIW failure, impact workaround. And I say it many, many times in Sims, because in those moments, right, the stress skyrockets, and it's helpful to have something to center yourself on of okay, what is my job? Right? I just heard my equipment is leaking water, and free water on the station means we could start shorting out boxes. It's got all these different situations. You can't let your mind run away of okay, what? Oh, no, what is happening? How did we get here? What is fleck? And ask next? And it's FIW that's what I'm looking for, right? So if they can diagnose, for me, the failure, what information they've taken in to say, I think this is kind of what's going on, or better yet, I think it's one of these couple things. And what that means, then the impact is that we need the crew to, you know, it's, it's a crew risk. It is a this box might be broken, and if it's broken, it means we've lost these capabilities. A lot of times I have to slow people down. Of The impact can get lost, because we're all trying to get to the W the workaround, right? Because we're all very, very type A well prepared people, and we're here to solve the problem, right? So sometimes you have to slow people down to get fully out the eye, because the W the workaround can come with its own risk. It's going to come with its own resource needs. And I need that information of the impact to decide, is this something we need to go new now and and, you know, to reference our previous conversation, the W should contain like, Hey, we've, we have a procedure for this, right? We've, we've, we haven't anticipated maybe this exact thing, but this box has failed, and I've got a procedure that says what to do when this box fails, or are we open field running where it is. We've never seen this before. We want to get to a safe state, and here is that place, right? A lot of times, the simplest solution is just get yourself safe, buy yourself time to talk about it. Leah Cheshier I think in a lot of movies in Hollywood, when you look at mission control during an anomaly or an undesired situation, something unexpected, it looks like Papers flying and so many conversations happening at once, and people are talking so fast and it's loud and it's raucous, and I think we've probably all been in Mission Control. When something goes off nominal, and it is so opposite that, you know, it is so maintained and calm and collected, the communication is clear. So how do you manage stress? How do you set those expectations as well? Amy Dill Yeah it's funny to build on that. I feel like when something happens unexpected, it gets really quiet. You hear the sound of typing in the room, because people are typing what crew is saying or what other team members are saying on the flight loop, Garrett Hehn yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think that's part of the we got to know what the problem is, right? So I think I'm very proud that the. Team has learned that characteristic, because I think it sets us up for success. I think of I had a mentor very early in my career in flight control tell me that you almost always have time to wind your watch. It's kind of an archaic thing. Now, you probably don't need to even wind your watch in a lot of cases, but the idea of even in those really, really fast situations, you probably have time to take a breath, right? And so I certainly practice that of once I have heard something before, I'm going to go make a decision. It's a deep breath. And I think that's just very something, very simple, but can be really powerful in terms of just bringing yourself into a better mind state of how to focus. I I've got an example of this one from, again, from undock and SpaceX 31 we're preparing the station for undock, which means we're going to move a whole bunch of articulating and moving joints into the right place. Because whenever we undock, the way we get away is firing rockets on Dragon, right? So that's going to impose a force. It's going to send stuff shooting at station, which we analyze, right? And we basically want to put all these joints in the right way, where we don't risk putting too much force into them and then breaking one of those things is our solar arrays. Spartans, in charge of power generation and distribution, are the ones responsible for putting those in place, and we've had a lot of history with these. We've got a lot of cases where they don't always behave like we want them to. They can be a little finicky. And about 20 minutes before undock, Spartan says, Hey, I'm about to go command this one array. We know it has this history. I'd like a preemptive go to execute this star block. Star block is just something that is a known anomaly condition. And here's the steps you want to do, right? So this was my Spartan thinking ahead to here's what could go wrong, right, which is just step one for making that reaction sound really smooth, right? Is, thinking through and preparing. And so then we do see that star block condition. It's rotating, but it isn't quite reaching the position we need it to. It's kind of moving back and forth. And so she lets me know, you know, I'm executing the star block, which is great. Of now I'm kept informed. I don't have to say anything more, because we've already discussed whether it's good to do or not, and it's just kind of silence. It's everybody knows. My the team knows that this is if we can't get this in position for undock, then we are not undocking Right. So there's nothing else that really needs to be said, and we all want to make sure that we're giving space for that person. I think this is also, you know, my technique is a deep breath. I don't know if Amy has another one. I'm sure everybody's found something, but I could tell whatever my Spartan was doing was working, because it's also a lot of pressure in that moment, right? Because the whole room goes kind of silent and everybody is just kind of looking at you, and I need to suppress the urge to be like, how's it going? How's it going? Did that work? Did that work? Right? Knowing that anytime they're talking to me is slowing them down, and so that's where I've got my stopwatch out, and I've already decided how much time I can wait until I need an update, and I've set that timer and I'm going to wait, and that is just guaranteeing that they've got space to try to figure it out. Leah Cheshier Well before we wrap it up, I wanted to ask for someone aspiring to join mission control as a Capcom or as a flight director. What's your advice to them? Amy Dill I guess I can start. I think being as Garrett said, a generalist. I think there's a lot of people that like to focus on a very specific area and learn everything about that area that they possibly can, and they devote their entire careers to that or fields of study, and that's great. We need people like that. But I think for Capcom, you need to be willing to learn and to expand your horizons beyond one subject and become a generalist and be interested in all kinds of different technical areas, and then communication is super important as well. And teamwork. I know Garrett talked about being on a swim team. I also growing up, was on a cross country team, played ice hockey in college, learning how to work as a team, and understanding people's strengths and being able to read other people, I think, is also really important as a Capcom, particularly in our communications with crew. You know, we can't always see crew, so being able to tell from a crew member's voice, are they? Are they having a good day? Are they? Are they frustrated with what, what's happening? Do they feel, you know, do you sense, a sense gratitude in their voice that okay, they, I've told them something that they they now understand what's going what we're working on in Mission Control. So being able to, I think, be empathetic towards other people. People and kind of read the body language or read the tone of voice, is also very helpful as a Capcom, Leah Cheshier great advice. Garrett, how about you? Garrett Hehn Amy said it great about teamwork and communication, because those are really the foundations. I think what makes the flight director unique is you've got to have have an understanding your leadership style. And I certainly encourage people that it's not something that you're born with, or you just walk into a room and you have it or you don't. It's very much something that can be practiced and tweaked and learned, and if you have the sort of humility to ask for feedback, all the better. I think some leaders trick themselves into thinking, well, if I ask for feedback, then they then they think I'm uncertain if I'm doing it right. And I think that is really silly. I think you're better off hearing from the folks that are on your team of is this really working right? Am I setting you up for success? And I see how early, you know, early in my life, early in my career, asking for that feedback has helped me find what is an authentic and effective leadership, because it certainly looks different across flight directors. And I think there is a need in your experience, to to have been in an uncomfortable situation, been outside the boundaries, and demonstrated that you can still think clearly and that you can pull the information you need, and that you've got some sort of internal process to deal with the stress we've talked about, because ultimately you're going to be Given a lot of responsibility at the flight console, and we want to see folks that have been exposed to that and understand their role in that moment. Leah Cheshier That's really encouraging advice from you both, because those are things that, like you said, Garrett, you know, it's not necessarily something that you're born with, but you can continue to work on and improve on. So thank you for that. Before we wrap up, wanted to give you both the opportunity to share any stories that you have from your console. Maybe a good day, maybe a time that you saved the day, maybe just something memorable, your first shift, or anything like that. I would love to hear that. Garrett Hehn Oh, man, they all, they all do run together. I think I can think of a recent one that I'll start with. We were getting ready for progress undock. Progress is a Russian cargo vehicle, and part of the things that we have a team member Topo, one of the responsibilities is seeing everything else in space, talking to the Space Force, and hearing for them, if there's anything close by that we need to be concerned about, and it's something that we're constantly monitoring. We don't always have to go do something, but you want to, again, gain the information early so that we can get some trending and sometimes you don't get that advantage. Sometimes it just appears late. And this was one of those times where now we have a piece of debris that's going to come close to station, and we've got to determine, do we need to get out of the way? And how do we get out of the way? And I reference the undock, because that is just a whole nother layer. So this, this is a story about a shift of how complicated it can get, even with just, you know, two elements you have trying to get an undock done, which is my mission priority, and then I have a piece of debris coming towards Space Station, which is a potential crew risk, right? So the easy answer is, well, I got to solve the crew risk, right? But risks come in different flavors, right? And in this case, when we're talking about pieces of debris, we've got a process to try to put a number to that, to actually say, here's the probability, and that's really helpful for a decision maker like myself, because I can see that number, but you need to be careful. You're not just tricked by the number. And so this was a shift where, because of the way the debris was behaving, risk was changing, and ultimately, I had to make one of the harder decisions, that is, we are not going to move station, which is pretty uncomfortable at times. You know that it's a little easier to take action, and a lot of times we can trick ourselves that I'm taking action, therefore it's the right thing to do. In this case, we had guidance. We've got flight rules, which are really effective documents where we went and talked to the program and said, Here's the situations where we are or are not going to take action on your 100 billion dollar Space Station, and they like to have that nice and laid out. But ultimately you can never again anticipate everything. So our job on that shift was to figure out, can we preserve the undock and do a debris avoidance maneuver, or do we need to do a debris avoidance maneuver and not into the undock? And ultimately, we watched the risks. We talked for hours about how we might do it, and it came out that we couldn't do both, and we had to choose. And Topo was able to show me that this is below the threshold to which we would take that mission impact. And I had to make the uncomfortable decision to say, Okay, we're, we're going to wait and we're just going to, we're going to stare that down and see if any more data comes and thankfully, our processes work right. The space station was not hit by a piece of debris, and we were able to undock, but it's certainly a stressful shift. Leah Cheshier It sounds like it. I don't envy you in that decision point at all. Amy, how about you? Amy Dill So I have on a little card here that I carry foundations of flight operations. And if folks are familiar, there's a couple of key words, discipline, competence, responsibility, toughness, teamwork and vigilance. But there's actually two other bits to the foundations, and number two pertains to the story I'm about to tell, which is to always be aware that suddenly and unexpectedly we may find ourselves in a role where our performance has the ultimate consequences. So I got certified as an ISS Capcom in 2021 October, and in late fall of 2021 there was a unexpected satellite breakup. It was my second shift as a Capcom. Oh my gosh. I got a phone call from my boss at the time, who told me it was before I was I was getting ready to go on to shift. It's about midnight, 12:30 at night, I'm coming in for probably more like 11, coming in for 1am and my boss is telling me there's been a satellite breakup. We don't really know what you're going to be going into. I had not spoken to the crew. The crew had only been on board for about a week, so I hadn't had a chance to talk to them yet. And I came in and they on call. Capcom had been called in. We always have an on call who we can call in case something happens unexpectedly when Capcom is not on duty, because Capcom is not on duty, except for when the crew is awake and on duty. So the on call gotten called in, and we were putting the crew into a safe haven, which is basically getting them into their vehicles just in case something hit the station. And it was a pretty fast safe haven. We didn't have a lot of time to do it, so I came in and it was it was definitely a memorable shift. The crew were in their vehicles for a couple of hours till we got more information about the satellite breakup and what the risks were when they we were able to release them from their vehicles, and then kind of look at the rest of the day and see what they could still do, or even felt like doing, because they've been stressful for them as well. And we were still getting information about the satellite breakup, and so we had to keep some modules isolated, just because there is greater risk to having them non isolated. So looking at the time and seeing, well, crew can't do that experiment because it's in the module that they can't get to. And yeah, second shift, second shift is a Capcom, but I think in the end, you realize, and you talked about stress before, it is very important that you do your job in the highest possible capacity to keep the crew safe, and part of that is maintaining your own focus and not letting an emotional response Take over fear or worry, not being paralyzed by by unproductive emotions, having a respect for the situation. And then also you're here to execute a procedure. I mean, we had the crew in a procedure. We had a procedure. We knew what we needed to do, so anchoring to what needs to be done also helps in those stressful situations. I hope I never have a shift like that again. It was definitely a teachable moment. I think the flight director turned to me and said, What? He was a newer flight director. It wasn't you Gary. He turned to me and said, I'll tell you his letter. He turned to me and said, What shift is this for you? And I said, two and the uncalled and the uncalled said, Don't look at me. This is my fourth shift, but in the end, you know, we we had trained for it, we had the procedure. We knew how to execute. We kept the crew safe, the crew knew how to execute, and we got through it. And now it's just a memory, but an institutive one that I remember whenever I say console, Dan, it was only uphill from there. Yeah, I'm really, I'm really grateful that I've not had a hard, hard shift like that since so because that means the crew's been safe. Leah Cheshier Yeah, I'm grateful too, and I'm grateful for this conversation today. It's been great to have you both here, and just to get a behind the scenes look at life as a flight director, life as a Capcom, what that means, and all of your stories. So just wanted to thank you both for the work you've two for helping us share the NASA mission. We really appreciate it. Thank you Garrett Hehn Thanks. Amy Dill It's been great to talk to you. Leah Cheshier Thanks for sticking around, and I hope you learned something new today. This is the last episode in a series of podcasts where we highlighted the roles of all the different consoles inside the International Space Station Flight Control Room in Mission Control Houston. Visit nasa.gov/podcasts to catch up on all the other episodes, breaking down just how the home of human space flight operates. You'll also find the rest of our full collection of episodes on nasa.gov/podcasts along with the many other wonderful podcasts we have across the agency. Find us on social media, on the NASA Johnson Space Center pages of Facebook, X and Instagram, and use #AskNASA on your favorite platform to submit your idea or ask a question, just make sure to mention it's for Houston We Have a Podcast. This discussion was recorded on December 18, 2024. Thanks to Dane Turner, Will Flato, Daniel Tohill, Courtney Beasley and Dominique Crespo. Special, thanks to Chelsey Ballarte, Jaden Jennings, and Flight Director Paul Konyha for helping us plan and set up these interviews. And of course, thanks again to Garrett and Amy for taking time to come on the show. Give us a rating and feedback on whatever platform you're listening to us on, and tell us what you think of our podcast. We'll be back next week.