NASA Johnson Facts:

NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) is located in Houston, Texas. JSC was established in 1961 as the Manned Spacecraft Center. The Center was renamed in 1973 in honor of the late President Lyndon B. Johnson. JSC serves as the lead NASA center for the International Space Station -- a U.S.-led collaborative effort of 16 nations, and the largest, most powerful, complex human facility to ever operate in space. JSC is also home to the NASA astronaut corps, and is responsible for training space explorers from the United States and our space station partner nations. As such, it is the principal training site for both space shuttle crews and International Space Station Expedition crews.

For more information, visit
NASA Johnson Space Center home page.

Patricia Carreon NASA Johnson Space Center

Electrical Engineer

Ms. Patricia (Pat) Carreon has worked as an engineer at both Goddard (GSFC) and Johnson Space Center (JSC) . While at Goddard, she was the network engineer for the Hubble Space Telescope Vision 2000 project. She also wrote flight software for the Gamma Ray Observatory and helped develop the Data Distribution Facility.

In 1998, Ms. Carreon transferred to JSC and began working in the Mission Operations Directorate conducting operations research and strategic development. She was the NASA lead for development of the Shuttle and Space Station command servers and the NASA lead for the development of the Shuttle and Station's data archive server. All of these servers are in operations, supporting Shuttle and Station missions and simulations.

Currently, she is a member of the Advanced Operations Cadre (AOC), a group that is reevaluating the way NASA performs operations on future missions.
The AOC utilizes new operations procedures and tools to support a number
of analog missions -- missions that are analogous to current and future
space missions.

Ms. Carreon is supporting the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) and Desert Research and Technology Study (Desert RATS) analog missions. NEEMO is an analog to a Space Station mission except that the astronauts become aquanauts and live in an underwater habitat. Desert RATS
is an analog to surface operations of a Moon or Mars mission where human - robot interactions are tested at a meteor crater in Arizona. Ms. Carreon is supporting these missions as a member of ground team in a small control
center called the ExPOC (Exploration Planning & Operations Center) at the Johnson Space Center.

She recently lent her engineering expertise serving on a board to review the proposals for newly designed launch vehicles as a part of the space launch initiative. She is currently involved in a study to examine the requirements necessary for the return to flight space shuttle effort, as well as defining the future role of the orbiters and the crew exploration vehicle. Pat enjoys her job because it is a challenge, and she loves the opportunity to work on technically oriented space projects.

In addition to this work, Ms. Carreon serves as a mentor for other NASA JSC engineers through the NASA JSC mentorship program. She has also been involved with mentoring high school students encouraging the pursuit of engineering and science related careers.

Ms. Carreon attained a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Southern Methodist University, and earned her Masters of Science in Electrical Engineering from George Mason University. She was born and raised in San Antonio, Texas. Her roots are from Mexico and Spain.

AUGUST 2004