Dina Contella, daughter of Susan and Dick King of Temple, graduated from Temple High School in 1988.
“Her name then was Dina Barclay,” said Dick King, the Temple College tennis coach.
Contella went to Texas A&M University after graduating and received a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering in 1992. She began working with NASA in 1990, while she was still attending the university.
Since 1995, Contella has been the space shuttle and space station flight controller and astronaut instructor and has been responsible for planning, training and executing space walks. She was also the lead spacewalk liaison to Russia during early construction of the space station.
After the Columbia accident, in which all seven members of the crew died, Contella helped develop repair tools and techniques for the space shuttles’ thermal protection system.
“After the Columbia accident, that vehicle was lost, so any future vehicles we wanted to make sure had repair kit materials on board,” she said. “I was involved in developing those techniques that the spacewalkers would use.”
Contella was chosen along with two others, Scott Stover and Ed Van Cise, to join a select number of people leading spaceflights from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
John McCullough, chief of the Flight Director Office at the Johnson Space Center, said Contella, Stover and Van Cise have lead management experience and an average of 10 years of flight control experience.
Flight directors manage human spaceflights from the ground and are in charge of day-to-day operations at Mission Control, Contella said.
As a flight director, she also will lead planning and integration activities with flight controllers, payload customers, international partners, and technical and program support across the agency.
“The flight director, in my case, will be in charge of the International Space Station operations,” she said. “I will make sure the vehicle is well maintained.”
