Heather Rarick vividly remembers being 4 years old and watching a black-and-white television in fascination as the Saturn V rockets fired to begin Apollo 11's mission to the moon.
Now, the Mt. Lebanon native will be one of only 28 people responsible for managing all space shuttle flights and space station expeditions.
Rarick, 40, of Houston, has been named a flight director at NASA. After completing training, she will work at Mission Control at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
"I'm looking forward to the challenges," Rarick said Thursday during a break in meetings with Russian space personnel. "It's another level that I haven't done yet."
The Mt. Lebanon High School graduate will be the lone flight manager responsible for directing the mission operations of spacecraft launches at Cape Canaveral, Fla.
It's a dream job for Rarick, who was mathematically precocious even in elementary school, said her father, Donald Peters, a retired Keystone Oaks High School math teacher.
"Two years ago I was in the control room at Johnson (Space Center) and she introduced me to one of the flight directors," recalled Peters, of Mt. Lebanon. "She said to me, 'Dad, that woman is really smart.' I'm thinking she must be pretty smart, too."
In more than 40 years of manned spaceflight, only 69 people have served as NASA flight directors, according to NASA.
"They're the cream of the crop," said Kylie Clem, spokeswoman for mission operations at Johnson Space Center. Typically, flight directors eventually enter top management positions at NASA, she said.
After graduating in 1987 from Penn State University with a degree in aerospace engineering, Rarick began her career as an ascent flight design engineer for the space shuttle at Rockwell Space Operations Company in Houston.
She went on to work as a liaison with Russian Mission Control in Moscow. In 2003, she became the chairwoman of the Russian Joint Operations Panel, a group seeking long-term resolutions of operational issues between the U.S. and Russia.
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