Marshall Space Flight Center’s new Director Pelfrey says he is ‘honored and grateful’
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (WHNT) — NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center’s (MSFC) newest Director, Joseph Pelfrey said he was “deeply humbled” to be selected for the job.
Pelfrey was announced as MSFC’s newest Director last week, when the official announcement came from NASA Administrator, Bill Nelson.
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Pelfrey is filling the space left by former MSFC Director, Jody Singer, after her retirement in July of last year. However, he is a familiar face to many in the Rocket City.
Following Singer’s retirement, Pelfrey served as Acting Director. Prior to that, he worked as Deputy Director. According to NASA, his career at Marshall Space Flight Center dates back to the early 2000’s, when he worked as an aerospace engineer on the International Space Station (ISS) Program.
Despite having been selected as Acting Director during the transition period, Pelfrey said he wasn’t guaranteed the Director position. At a media event Thursday morning, Pelfrey said a “nationwide search” was conducted for the role.
He said he is, “deeply humbled and honored and grateful to get to serve,” as the new Director of Marshall Space Flight Center.
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“As we write the next chapter of our story, I’m confident of a bright future that we have for Marshall Space Flight Center,” he said.
Pelfrey told News 19 that his love for space started at a very young age.
“As a small town kid from South Carolina, I was just enamored with spaceflight, with aircraft and airplanes” he said. “I grew up as a shuttle kid, I was part of the shuttle generation, I recorded every shuttle flight, and would go replay and watch it over and over again” Pelfrey said.
“So working for NASA’s has been a childhood dream of mine, and I can’t imagine a better place to be a better group of people to work with and a better community to be in. The passion for this community and what they have for our mission and what we do as an agency is beyond anywhere else in the country… Your neighbors, your friends, your colleagues, your family members are coming here every day to help advance our nation’s goals and aspects of space exploration, and I cannot imagine a better place to be than to get to work with that team every day” Pelfrey added.
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He said he looks forward to leading Marshall as it continues work on several important missions, including laying the groundwork for NASA’s return of humans to the Moon, and beyond.
“We’re starting to develop the concepts for how we’re going to do science on the surface of the moon, and how we’ll do science in lunar orbit and eventually on the way to Mars,” he said.
MSFC currently has around 7,000 employees, and Pelfrey said it has added 600 of those just since March of 2020.
“We are excited to welcome that new generation in our workforce, the Artemis generation,” he said.
Despite recent layoffs at other NASA operations, like the cut of 530 employees at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) in California, he said Marshall remains strong.
“We are partners with JPL, and so we feel the pain that they are experiencing with the cuts that have happened,” Pelfrey said. “We [Marshall Space Flight Center] were able to restructure some of our contracts on the Mars ascent vehicle and re-plan some of our staffing to handle the reductions in staffing.”
Pelfrey also talked about a planned expansion of Marshall Space Flight Center’s footprint on Redstone Arsenal.
“We have two new facilities that are in the design process right now to help enable Marshall’s future,” he said. “One is called the Marshall Exploration Facility, which will sit on the site of our previous headquarters building. [Building] 4208 will provide us a lab auditorium, space collaboration, Space training center and many other services that we lost when we lost 4200…. We’re also excited to start the design process for a new engineering and science laboratory,144,000 square foot facility, state-of-the-art that will enable the missions that we’re supporting for the future” Pelfrey said.
“Both of these are expected in the coming years, and we’re very excited to change the landscape of Marshall Space Flight Center.”
MSFC Director Joseph Pelfrey
Pelfrey also announced the return of the family-friendly “NASA in the Park” event. He said this year it will be held at Big Spring Park on June 22nd.
Overall, he said he feels good about the future.
“Marshall Space Flight Center has a tremendous future built on a legacy of space exploration endeavors that only we could do, ” he said. “I can’t be more excited about the future that we have.”
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