At 2:00 a.m. on a Wednesday in the middle of January, some people are asleep, some people are up watching TV, and someone at NASA is controlling the International Space Station. That someone is Jacob Might, an Altitude Determination and Control Officer at NASA.
“NASA Flight Controllers are responsible for ensuring the safety of US astronauts and Russian cosmonauts on board the International Space Station (ISS), as well as ensuring the ISS vehicle safety and successful completion of the ISS mission objectives,” NASA employee Jacob Might said.
After graduating from Purdue University in 2015 with a degree in aeronautical and astronautical engineering, Might jumped into a career at NASA just two months later. There, he quickly learned the importance of relying on others to ensure success.
“Teamwork is everything. In the control center, the most important thing to ensure is the astronauts’ and ISS safety is extremely precise communication, collaboration, and technical expertise,” Might said.
With the Flight Control Team being staffed 24/7, Might has experienced some less-than-typical shifts.
“I was actually working overnight shifts during Hurricane Harvey. The flight control team literally moved in to the space center, sleeping on cots in the hallways and eating lots of really bad canned foods and dry goods,” Might said.
To ensure mission success, bases all over the world work together, constantly exchanging information.
“We work in collaboration with control centers in Huntsville, Alabama, Moscow, Russia, Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany, and Tsukuba, Japan,” Might.
Those figures are just from the ISS program; NASA employs over 18,000 people to achieve its goals.
Jacob Might has always aspired to be one of the 18,000, and his commitment and passion has prepared him for the job he is in today.
“Creativity is just as important as aptitude in the classroom. If you want to work at NASA, the most important thing you can do is be passionate,” he said.