William W. Parsons (NASA)

William W. Parsons
9th Director of the Kennedy Space Center
In office
January 4, 2007  October 26, 2008
President George W. Bush
Preceded by James W. Kennedy
Succeeded by Robert D. Cabana
5th and 7th Director of the Stennis Space Center
In office
September 2005  February 2006
President George W. Bush
Preceded by Thomas Q. Donaldson
Succeeded by Richard Gilbrech
In office
August 2002  May 2003
President George W. Bush
Preceded by Roy Estess
Succeeded by Thomas Q. Donaldson
Space Shuttle Program Manager
In office
May 2003  September 2005
President George W. Bush
Preceded by Ronald D. Dittemore
Succeeded by N. Wayne Hale Jr.
Personal details
Born United States
Alma mater University of Mississippi
University of Central Florida
Profession Engineer

William W. (Bill) Parsons is an American engineer. He served as the ninth director of NASA's John F. Kennedy Space Center, and as the fifth and seventh director of NASA's John C. Stennis Space Center.[1]

Parsons served as Space Shuttle Program Manager from 2003 to 2005, and was instrumental in the space shuttle program's return to flight in 2005 following the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster.

NASA career

Parsons joined the NASA team in 1990 at the Kennedy Space Center as a launch site support manager in the Shuttle Operations Directorate.

In 1997, he was assigned to Stennis Space Center as the chief of operations of the Propulsion Test Directorate. Parsons relocated to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston to become the director of the Center Operations Directorate. He later served as the deputy director. In 2001, he returned to Stennis and served as director of the Center Operations and Support Directorate. His first stint as Stennis center director came in August 2002.

He was appointed as Space Shuttle Program manager in 2003 to lead the return-to-flight activities for the agency and played a major role in the success of the Discovery STS-114 mission. He then returned to Stennis to assume the duties of center director again and to lead hurricane recovery efforts at Stennis and the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans.

Personal life

Parsons holds a bachelor's degree in engineering from the University of Mississippi, and a master's degree in engineering management from the University of Central Florida.

He resides on Merritt Island, Florida with his wife and two children.

References

This article incorporates public domain text from NASA
  1. http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/about/biographies/parsons.html NASA - Biography of William W. (Bill) Parsons
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 4/26/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.