TWO PACKED DAYS

It’s two years until the launch of Exploration Mission 1, but Blackwell-Thompson is busier now than she’s ever been in her career. This mission is the first test flight of NASA’s Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft, which will set the stage and test the components for sending astronauts to Mars. It’s the most powerful rocket NASA has ever developed, and according to Blackwell-Thompson, “has the capability to take us to deep space, wherever our country might decide to go, whether that’s the moon, Mars or some place entirely different.”
“This first mission is about testing out the capabilities,” she says, “to make sure everything works the way it’s supposed to, so that when we get ready to fly a crew a few years down the road, we’ll be ready to go.”
In the development stage leading up to that launch, Blackwell-Thompson and her team are building new ground equipment and new flight hardware, and making sure it works together. They’re putting “an amazing rocket” together and making sure it’s ready to fly. “There’s a tremendous amount of work in doing that,” she says. “It’s a more brisk pace than I had when  we were flying during the shuttle program, and I thought I was really busy then.”
There’s also the coordination of developing different components in three different locations. The flight hardware for the heavy lift rocket is being developed out of Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Orion, the crew module, is being developed out of Johnson Space Center in Houston. And the hardware and various components are manufactured all across the country.
“For me as launch director,” says Blackwell-Thompson, “I’m also trying to look at how I build this launch team. We have a lot of expertise on the team that worked on the shuttle program, but this is a brand new rocket with brand new ground systems. You have to figure out how to get this team ready to go fly this rocket and make sure they have the expertise they need.”

“There’s a lot that goes into the two days
of launch countdown.”

She begins to tick off some of the many parts of the process: “There is what goes into the launch itself — what does the launch countdown look like, how long is it, what’s the work we need to do, how do we verify it’s ready to fly.” Then there are the launch commit criteria to develop, the set of rules that govern whether or not you’re ready to fly on launch day, and developing launch countdown procedures and timelines.
“Then you have to go practice it,” she says, “and make sure you’re ready for anything that the vehicle might throw at you in a given day. You want to make sure you’ve simulated the
potential problems, and that you run through those anomalies and you know how you’re going to respond to them.”
And then there are launch capabilities: fuel requirements for multiple launch attempts within a given window, imagery of the vehicle that is needed during cryogenic propellant loading and prior to launch, communication across the multitude of NASA centers on launch day, command and control system capabilities to send time-critical commands to the vehicle to get data back to make split-second calls when the countdown clock is moving.
She breathes. “There’s a lot that goes into the two days of launch countdown.”

EVERY LAUNCH COUNTDOWN

There are small moments in all of our lives that we look back on and realize were much more significant than we ever imagined. For Blackwell-Thompson, it was a class at Clemson called Software Engineering, taught by Professor James Leathrum. A course dreaded by many because it was so difficult, it ignited Blackwell-Thompson’s mind and imagination and set her on the path to become the first female launch director at NASA.
It was both the topic, she says, and the way Leathrum taught. “He was a phenomenal teacher,” she says, “a very data-driven, methodical teacher who kind of just walked you through the process. That was a great way for me to learn.”
So when she began interviewing for a job, and they asked her what she wanted to do, she responded that she was really interested in software verification and validation.
Turns out the folks at Kennedy Space Center were looking for someone to do just that.
Blackwell-Thompson’s first job was at Kennedy Space Center, working with McDonnell Douglas as a contractor. She was hired to do software validation and verification, although the methods varied from what she had learned in class. She tested payload software (the payload is the cargo that the shuttle carried into space) and made sure that it worked well with the orbiter flight software on board the shuttle.
She branched out a bit after that, working avionics systems for payloads including the Hubble Telescope, then serving as lead electrical integration engineer, responsible for all the electrical and software integration of a particular payload. In 2004, she moved over from the contractor workforce to work directly for NASA in the test director’s office. Test directors are in charge of executing the launch countdown on behalf of the launch director, so they are the voices you hear on launch day, kicking off various steps of the launch. She became a certified test director, responsible for loading the cryogenic propellant into the external tank during a countdown and then became a certified launch test director, the only woman certified into that position during the space shuttle program.
After several launches, she moved into the position as chief NASA test director, where she stayed until the end of the program in 2011. When the shuttle program ended, she transitioned to the Ground Systems Development and Operations program before being selected as the launch director in 2016.
Despite the different roles, she’s been working in the firing room since 1988, a place that feels like home for her. “I say with a lot of pride that I worked a number of missions from 1988 until 2004 — dozens,” she says, “but I am very proud of the fact that from our return to flight after the Columbia accident until the end of the shuttle program, I worked every launch countdown.”

LEADING FROM THE HEART

Dreaming and planning coupled with dedication and hard work was modeled for Blackwell-Thompson by her parents and grandparents when she was growing up in rural South Carolina. “They worked, and they farmed, and they provided food and livestock from their own land. I don’t know if I appreciated it as much at the time, but it was something that was instilled in me from an early age — a strong work ethic and dedication.”
And that’s what she wants to pass on, both to her kids and to the young women she mentors. “It all starts with a dream. You’ve got to be willing to dream and be willing to say, ‘This is what I want.’ But you have to put work with it, or it’s just a dream. When you have a dream and you’re willing to work for it, then it becomes a plan. And plans are implementable.”
Finding your passion is the other lesson she wants to pass on. “That will take you far,” she says. “It will take you past challenges that you come across. When you love what you do, it doesn’t really feel like work.”
It’s clear that Blackwell-Thompson has found her passion, and she shares that passion on a daily basis. Her boss, Mike Bolger, program manager for Ground Systems Development and Operations, says that he is amazed that she finds time for all that is involved in being launch director while also mentoring many female engineers at Kennedy as well as students in the local area. “She has personally inspired young women to pursue careers at NASA by telling her story and making them realize that engineering careers are open to women and are within reach,” he says.
Bolger says she initially comes across as laid-back, “but the reality is that she is a hard driving, passionate, NASA leader who gets things done,” and says she “didn’t get to be NASA’s first female launch director for human spaceflight by accident. She came up through the ranks proving herself as technically expert, a person who meets commitments, a leader who is a natural team builder.”
That leadership and team building is crucial as she works toward the launch of Exploration Mission 1. “People want to follow her,” says Graeber. “Charlie is able to galvanize people together — not just on a technical and engineering operations basis, but from the heart. She knows how to pull every bit of resources and best effort out of everybody, not because she’s driving them to do it, but people want to go down the path she’s laid out, because she’s inspired them, and she does that so well.”
Her pride is evident when she talks about the team she leads. “Over the course of the shuttle program, more times than I can count, I have watched this team do amazing work and accomplish things that are very challenging, that maybe on paper, you’d look and say, ‘This can’t be done.’ But when you put the creative minds and the passion behind it, amazing things happen.
“To lead this team for this inaugural flight, I just feel blessed. That’s the word that comes to mind first. It’s a privilege. It’s an honor to have that responsibility and to be given that opportunity.”