Jun 10, 2021
People often ask me what it was like as a “NASA” insider. On this episode of Casual Space, one of the very best of the best, Michael Ciannilli joins me to share highlights and lessons learned from more than 25 years at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Michael “Mike” Ciannilli is NASA’s manager of the Apollo, Challenger, Columbia Lessons Learned Program, where he helps innovatively and effectively share NASA’s lessons of the past to help ensure future success.
Inspired by Mike and his work? Check out these videos from NASA EDGE, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvOHNIbVBRI and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtowgLH-HyA
And read more about Mike here:
As manager of this agency level
program, Ciannilli oversees the Columbia Research and Preservation
Office, which preserves all Columbia artifacts, as well as the loan
program, which loans out Columbia artifacts for research and
academic purposes. In addition, this role involves giving lessons
learned tours for NASA engineers, scientists, interns, executives,
commercial partners and others. During these tours, he uses the
stories of Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia to share what has been
learned from these past mishaps to prevent reoccurrence in future
applications. Ciannilli also does lessons learned events at Kennedy
Space Center where he works to bring these past experiences and the
emotions behind the accidents alive through multimedia and
storytelling; these events will be expanding across the agency. In
addition to his main activities supporting the agency, Ciannilli
also collaborates with outside media organizations like National
Geographic to share these lessons learned with a wider
audience.
Prior to his current role,
Ciannilli was the lead of the Columbia Research and Preservation
Office, a position that is now encompassed in his new role. He also
led the creation and development of the Forever Remembered project
for Columbia and Challenger at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor
Complex. Previously, he served nine years as NASA Test Director for
the Space Shuttle Program at Kennedy, responsible for processing
oversight of the space shuttle orbiters and ground support systems
including launch and landing facilities. In addition, this
responsibility included leading the launch team through launch
countdown activities. He also was the Landing Recovery Director
during that time, responsible for leading contingency operations
during launch countdown and landing activities, including flight
crew recovery. In 2003, during the Columbia accident recovery,
Ciannilli flew extensively onboard helicopters across Texas
supporting air search operations and Columbia artifact
recovery.
Before joining NASA in 2005, Ciannilli was a
contractor for the United Space Alliance where he spent eight years
as a Test Project Engineer, leading the testing and engineering
integration during processing of the shuttles and launch
operations, and before that he was the lead of the Launch Countdown
Simulation Team, which developed simulations to train the launch
team. As the simulation lead for the Mission Management Team, he
also trained the leadership of the Space Shuttle Program. Prior to
this he worked as a fuel cell systems engineer assigned to
Columbia. He also worked as an intern for Pan Am World Services at
Cape Canaveral Air Force Base and taught high school.
He has
received numerous awards throughout his career, including the
astronauts’ Silver Snoopy, NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal, NASA
Program Leadership Award, Launch and Landing Leadership Award,
Launch Countdown Simulation Contingency Leadership Award, NASA
Quest Outreach Award and a Columbia Recovery Team Award, among many
others.
Ciannilli
has a Bachelor of Science in space science from the Florida
Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Florida.
Ciannilli grew up in Syracuse, New York. He
enjoys spending time with his family, surfing, swimming, boating,
sailing, hiking, skiing and film production.