Mike Masters

Mishap Investigation Program Executive, ACCLLP Program manager

Mike Masters is the Mishap Investigation Program executive in the Mishap Prevention and Organizational Performance Office and the program manager for the Apollo, Challenger, Columbia Lessons Learned Program (ACCLLP). He is located at Kennedy Space Center.

Prior to this role, Masters served as the chief of Mission Assurance and Program Integration Branch for Exploration Ground Systems (EGS) within SMA at Kennedy. He provided management and supervisory duties to the branch engineering team by providing SMA discipline expertise to all Exploration Systems Division programs, including Space Launch System, Orion and Exploration Ground Systems in support of their move from design and development to operations processing. He strategically focused efforts to define roles and responsibilities and develop a structured, diverse team possessing the strong mission assurance skills required to transition these programs to operations. This shift was successful due to Masters’ efforts to improve communication inside and outside the EGS SMA Division, grow leadership and technical expertise within the branch, create a streamlined Certificate of Flight Readiness process, and develop and implement a targeted risk-based assessment and mishap/close call investigation process.

Masters also served as the Source Evaluation Board chairperson for the SMA Support Services III (SMASS III) contract acquisition. The SMASS III contract is a Cost-Plus Fixed Fee contract to provide engineering and technical support services for multiple customers at Kennedy and across NASA. As chair, he successfully navigated the team through the Procurement Development Team phase, Request for Proposals, proposal evaluation, multiple Small Business Association and Government Accountability Office protests, and contract award, while effectively managing day-to-day operations and communications with Kennedy senior management, Headquarters procurement and legal office senior leadership.

Prior to this, he was the deputy chief of the Commercial Crew Program (CCP) SMA Office, where he supervised day-to-day operations and communications with the SMA Directorate leadership. In this role, he provided guidance and leadership to the SMA CCP team tasked with defining “shared assurance” and a process for the CCP Risk-Based Analysis, which were designed to strategically share assurance responsibilities between SMA, engineering and the program and tactically target surveillance activities for CCP.

In addition, Masters was the safety engineering operations lead and acting deputy chief for the Ground System Development and Operations (GSDO) — now EGS — SMA Office, where he was responsible for assisting the chief with management of office staff and the development of SMA policies and requirements for the GSDO, CCP and Advanced Exploration Systems (AES). In this role, he led the reorganization of the KSC SMA Directorate to better align with the new programs following the retirement of the space shuttle. Following the reorganization, he transitioned to the lead safety engineer position, responsible for managing all Operational Safety and System Safety analyses in support of the Program Development and Operations Division and AES projects at Kennedy.

Before these roles, he was the executive management intern for the director of Kennedy, a position that served as a developmental assignment to broaden his understanding of the center’s decision-making process and external customers and stakeholders involved in that process. He also previously served as the Kennedy Range Safety lead, where he led a diverse technical team in all center Range Safety activities, including the development, monitoring and implementation of agency Range Safety policies relating to space and sub-orbital launches and landing of space launch vehicles and associated technologies.

Masters also has experience performing technical and nontechnical engineering evaluations in the form of independent assessments relating to SMA for internal and external customers, including launch vehicle processing, the International Space Station, Constellation program, Launch Services Program and Kennedy institutional facilities.

Prior to joining NASA, Masters supported Computer Sciences Raytheon, a contractor responsible for launch support to the Eastern Range. Specifically, he supported the application of Eastern Range Safety instrumentation systems during real-time console support of Expendable Launch Vehicle and space shuttle launch operations as a Range Safety coordinator and data processing lead in a variety of Eastern Range Safety instrumentation systems.

Masters has a Bachelor of Science degree in space sciences from the Florida Institute of Technology. He’s taken NASA’s “Leading Through Influence,” “Introduction to Mishap Investigations” and SMA Technical Excellence Program Level 1 training. He has earned multiple awards throughout his career, including the Kennedy Superior Accomplishment Award, Kennedy Group Achievement Award, Group Achievement Honor Award, Gold Dollar Award and Space Flight Awareness Launch Honoree Award.

Masters is married and has four children. His favorite hobbies are anything that involves his family; he coaches his children in a variety of sports, including baseball, basketball, football, soccer, and golf. He and his family enjoy boating; golfing; and all watersport activities, including paddle boarding, kayaking, fishing and snorkeling.