William W. (Bill) Parsons is an American

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the l ...

. He served as the ninth director of

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...

John F. Kennedy Space Center The John F. Kennedy Space Center (KSC, originally known as the NASA Launch Operations Center), located on Merritt Island, Florida, is one of the NASA, National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) ten NASA facilities#List of field ...

, and as the fifth and seventh director of NASA's

John C. Stennis Space Center The John C. Stennis Space Center (SSC) is a NASA rocket testing facility in Hancock County, Mississippi, United States, on the banks of the Pearl River at the Mississippi–Louisiana border. , it is NASA's largest rocket engine test facility. ...

. Parsons served as Space Shuttle Program Manager from 2003 to 2005, and was instrumental in the

Space Shuttle The Space Shuttle is a retired, partially reusable low Earth orbital spacecraft system operated from 1981 to 2011 by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as part of the Space Shuttle program. Its official program na ...

's return to flight in 2005 following the Space Shuttle ''Columbia'' disaster.

Career

NASA

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 The Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center (JSC) is NASA's center for human spaceflight (originally named the Manned Spacecraft Center), where human spaceflight training, research, and flight control are conducted. It was renamed in honor of the late U ...

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 Discovery may refer to: * Discovery (observation), observing or finding something unknown * Discovery (fiction), a character's learning something unknown * Discovery (law), a process in courts of law relating to evidence Discovery, The Discovery ...

STS-114 STS-114 was the first "Return to Flight" Space Shuttle mission following the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, Space Shuttle ''Columbia'' disaster. Space Shuttle Discovery, ''Discovery'' launched at 10:39 Eastern Time Zone, EDT (14:39 Coordinated ...

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.

Post-NASA

After leaving NASA, Parson would be hired as the Vice-President of Peraton's Human Space Programs.

Personal life

Parsons holds a bachelor's degree in engineering from the

University of Mississippi The University of Mississippi (byname Ole Miss) is a public research university that is located adjacent to Oxford, Mississippi, and has a medical center in Jackson. It is Mississippi's oldest public university and its largest by enrollment. ...

, and a master's degree in engineering management from the

University of Central Florida The University of Central Florida (UCF) is a public research university whose main campus is in unincorporated Orange County, Florida. UCF also has nine smaller regional campuses throughout central Florida. It is part of the State University ...

. He resides in Sanford, Florida.

References

:''This article incorporates public domain text fro
NASA
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External links

* Living people 20th-century American engineers 21st-century American engineers American aerospace engineers Directors of the Kennedy Space Center University of Mississippi alumni University of Central Florida alumni Parklane Academy alumni People from Merritt Island, Florida People from McComb, Mississippi Year of birth missing (living people) {{NASA-stub