Bryan Lunney (born January 12, 1966) is an American aerospace engineer and former

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

flight director.

Early life

The son of

Apollo Apollo is one of the Twelve Olympians, Olympian deities in Ancient Greek religion, ancient Greek and Ancient Roman religion, Roman religion and Greek mythology, Greek and Roman mythology. Apollo has been recognized as a god of archery, mu ...

-era flight director

Glynn Lunney Glynn Stephen Lunney (November 27, 1936 – March 19, 2021) was an American NASA engineer. An employee of NASA since its creation in 1958, Lunney was a flight controller, flight director during the Project Gemini, Gemini and Project Apollo, Apo ...

(1936–2021), Bryan Lunney grew up in

Friendswood, Texas Friendswood is a city in the U.S. state of Texas. It is part of the Greater Houston metropolitan area. The city lies in Galveston and Harris counties. As of the 2020 census, the population of Friendswood was 41,213. History Friendswood, s ...

, and attended Friendswood High School. He graduated from

Texas A&M University Texas A&M University (Texas A&M, A&M, TA&M, or TAMU) is a public university, public, Land-grant university, land-grant, research university in College Station, Texas, United States. It was founded in 1876 and became the flagship institution of ...

in 1988 with a

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, B.S., B.Sc., SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree that is awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Scienc ...

degree in

Aerospace Engineering Aerospace engineering is the primary field of engineering concerned with the development of aircraft and spacecraft. It has two major and overlapping branches: aeronautical engineering and astronautical engineering. Avionics engineering is s ...

NASA career

After graduation, Lunney took a job at NASA's

Johnson Space Center The Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center (JSC) is NASA's center for human spaceflight in Houston, Texas (originally named the Manned Spacecraft Center), where human spaceflight training, research, and flight controller, flight control are conducted. ...

. He worked in

Mission Control A mission control center (MCC, sometimes called a flight control center or operations center) is a facility that manages space flights, usually from the point of launch until landing or the end of the mission. It is part of the ground segment ...

as a Propulsion Engineer before moving to become head of the Motion Control Systems Group, a flight control position associated with the

International Space Station The International Space Station (ISS) is a large space station that was Assembly of the International Space Station, assembled and is maintained in low Earth orbit by a collaboration of five space agencies and their contractors: NASA (United ...

. At the time of his father's death in 2021, they were the first and only multi-generational flight directors to have served NASA. In January, 2001, Lunney was appointed a flight director. He was on duty during the

Expedition 4 Expedition 4 was the fourth expedition to the International Space Station (7 December 2001 – 15 June 2002). Crew Mission parameters * Perigee: 384 km * Apogee: 396 km * Inclination: 51.6° * Period: 92 min Mission objectives The ...

mission when the

's computers failed, leaving the station's

gyroscopes A gyroscope (from Ancient Greek γῦρος ''gŷros'', "round" and σκοπέω ''skopéō'', "to look") is a device used for measuring or maintaining Orientation (geometry), orientation and angular velocity. It is a spinning wheel or disc in ...

without the information they needed in order to hold the station's attitude stable. Lunney led controllers in creating a primitive but effective temporary solution to the problem, having the crew control the attitude of the space station based on their observations of the Sun's position. He said later that “I felt like a fireman who’d walked out of a burning house having just rescued the kids from the bedroom.” Lunney also worked as a flight director on Expedition 11, and as the Planning/Orbit 3 flight director on the

STS-115 STS-115 was a Space Shuttle mission to the International Space Station (ISS) flown by . It was the first assembly mission to the ISS after the ''Columbia'' disaster, following the two successful ''Return to Flight'' missions, STS-114 and STS- ...

mission in September 2006.Mission Overview Briefing Materials (STS-115)
/ref>

Personal life

Lunney and his wife, the former Amori Syptak, have three children, Christopher, Macy, and Drake.

Footnotes

References

* *

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lunney, Bryan American aerospace engineers NASA flight controllers Texas A&M University alumni People from Friendswood, Texas Living people 1966 births Engineers from Texas