Welcome to the Rocket Ranch

The Rocket Ranch welcomes Dana Hutcherson, deputy manager for the Commercial Crew program. She'll talk about the mission ahead, reflect on the program's 10-year anniversary and share her personal journey with NASA.

The spotlights came on in the predawn hours of April 12th 1981, illuminating a spacecraft like no other, the space shuttle. Just before liftoff, Columbia's crew climbed inside for the very first test flight into space.

When instrumentation controller JoAnn Morgan was in Firing Room number One for the historic moonshot in 1969, she was the only woman. NASA has come a long way since. Today, the very same firing room is led by a woman, and 30% of the engineers supporting NASA's Artemis Moon program are women, too.

The Rocket Ranch welcomes Sheldon Lauderdale, Program Analyst for NASA's Commercial Crew Program, to share where he draws inspiration and talk about his role supporting NASA’s efforts to expand diversity and inclusion to empower the next generation of explorers.

After a 300 million mile journey through space, the Mars Perseverance Rover is ready to begin the most challenging part of the trip, landing on the red planet. If successful, it will embark on the most advanced mission ever sent here, to discover if life ever existed on Mars.