Behind the Badge
GETTING TO KNOW THE FACES of 400
Christy Hansen Flight Projects Directorate (Code 400) Chief of Staff Born A suburb outside of Philadelphia, PA – in Delaware County Education BS: Comprehensive Science, with Minor in Physics, Villanova
University; MS: Space Studies, University of North Dakota
As the recently-appointed FPD Chief of Staff, Christy’s duties include overseeing special projects and assignments from Center and Code 400 leadership, such as providing technical and programmatic assessments, studies, and recommendations. She coordinates Senior Executive dialogs with Code 400, industry and Center partners. She oversees Rideshare and SmallSat projects, captures Code 400 highlights and accomplishments, and most recently, is involved in tracking COVID impacts.
Life Before Goddard Christy began her career at Johnson Space Center (JSC), where she worked for 11 years in the Mission Operations Directorate (MOD) as part of the Extra-vehicular Activity (EVA) group, as an operations engineer, astronaut instructor, and flight controller. She worked several International Space Station (ISS) and Hubble Space Telescope (HST) missions as the EVA task lead responsible for procedure and EVA timeline development, astronaut training across several venues, including the Neutral Buoyance Lab (NBL) Virtual Reality lab, air-bearing floor, mass simulator lab, and KC-135 microgravity aircraft, and provided real-time flight controller support of on-orbit mission operations. “Plan, Train, Fly”, was their motto! In support 70
NASA/GSFC THE CRITICAL PATH
of the final servicing mission to Hubble, STS-125/SM-4 in 2009, she trained the EVA/ spacewalking astronauts using the tools and techniques required to perform complex tasks on a telescope in a spacesuit in zero gravity.
Greenland, Alaska, Chile, and Antarctica. Her most challenging accomplishment was the deployment to McMurdo, Antarctica using Wallop’s P-3 wheeled aircraft and landing on an 8-foot thick runway made of sea ice in 2013.
In 2015, Christy became Goddard’s new Airborne Sciences Life at Goddard Christy came to Goddard in 2010 Manager, overseeing and guiding all of Goddard’s airborne in what is now Code 480, the science missions in the Code NASA Exploration and In-Space 610/Earth Science Division. She Services projects Division. She was the Operations Manager for provided management support, the Robotic Refueling Tech Demo mentorship, and guidance to airborne science teams across payload that flew to ISS on the all Earth science labs at Goddard. last shuttle mission, STS-135. She also led the development In 2012, she moved into Code of the Earth Venture-Suborbital 615, the Cryospheric Sciences (EVS-3) proposal call for Lab, as the Project Manager for concepts and served as capture the Operation IceBridge airborne manager for Goddard’s four science mission. In this role, down-selected proposals. She she helped to lead and facilitate also provided management seven airborne deployments to support to multi-Center airborne
