Rocket Woman: Vanessa Ellerbe Wyche '85, M '87
NASA is working on sending astronauts back to the moon in 2024. Wyche will be there every step of the way.
Excitement sneaks into Vanessa Wyche’s voice as she talks about the upcoming Artemis program, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s 2024 directive that will see astronauts set foot on the moon once again.
“Our intent is to go and have infrastructure in place that would allow additional capabilities on the surface of the moon,” she says. Those additional capabilities include setting up a small gateway platform that will act as a checkpoint for future missions to Mars.
As the deputy director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Wyche has a lot to do before then. One major priority is Orion — the spacecraft on track to return to the lunar surface.
“Having spacecraft that are able to withstand going from Earth to the lunar vicinity and returning is very important,” she says. “We’ve not done that since Apollo, so having the right technologies and the right testing are what our workforce is responsible for laying out.”
Aside from overseeing construction of Orion, Wyche’s responsibilities include monitoring the International Space Station and the Human Research program (which investigates how humans might survive for longer periods of time in space) as well as working with commercial partners, like Boeing and SpaceX, to develop vehicles that will transport astronauts to and from the space station. Wyche was named deputy director in 2018, but her career with NASA has spanned nearly three decades. After graduating with a bachelor’s and master’s in bioengineering from Clemson, Wyche headed to Washington, D.C., where she worked in the Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Device Evaluation. When she and her husband moved to Houston, she found work at NASA as a project engineer, designing flight hardware. Since then, she’s held multiple leadership positions and earned two NASA Exceptional Achievement Medals and two NASA Outstanding Leadership Medals.
When she’s not at Johnson Space Center, Wyche is championing STEM in her community. For the past six years, NASA has partnered with The Links, Incorporated to bring a science fair to a local elementary school. NASA employees visit the school and mentor the children on their projects, while the nonprofit provides the supplies and resources to put on the fair.
“The carrot, the way to get all the kids to participate,” says Wyche, “is that if they do their project — no matter how good or bad — they get a field trip to NASA.”
Recently the program has expanded to another local school, which faces even more challenges. Many of its students are destitute.
“But the surprising thing is that those kids were the most excited about being able to do a science project,” Wyche says. “I’m hoping to be able to continue to support both schools, and my longterm goal is to see if we can expand this further.”
Wyche’s work in STEM outreach comes from a place of gratitude for NASA’s commitment to future generations — and also a place of reflection about her own career, one she describes as “awesome. I cannot begin to tell you just how awesome.”