Dr. Charles Camarda began his career at NASA at the Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, in 1974. He has logged 333 hours in space, including on NASA’s Return to Flight mission in 2005 during which the Shuttle docked with the International Space Station. He was selected for astronaut training in 1996 and also served as director of engineering at Johnson Space Center. He is currently assigned to the NASA Johnson Space Center’s Engineering and Safety Center where he uses technical expertise to evaluate problems and supplement safety and engineering activities for Agency programs.
He has won over 21 performance and achievement awards from NASA and holds 7 patents, one of which earned him Industrial Research and Design magazine’s award for one of the top technical innovations in 1983, and he has one patent pending. He was on the first space flight following the Columbia tragedy, and his work on the heat-pipe cooling system and studies of foam materials, problems which played a role in the disaster, helped result in a successful launch and return.