Bay City native Ed Van Cise was selected as one of three individuals to join the ranks of flight directors in Mission Control at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Tasked with managing a team comprised of flight controllers, support personnel and engineering experts, a flight director assumes the overall responsibility for the execution of shuttle missions and space station expeditions.

Ed Van Cise was born in Bay City, Mich., and earned a bachelor’s in aerospace engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 2000.

Since March 2009, he has served as special assistant to the director of Mission Operations in a leadership development assignment.

Prior to that, Van Cise had been lead of the Mechanisms and Maintenance Training Group since 2007, responsible for the training of astronauts and flight controllers in skills and techniques needed to repair, maintain and assemble the station.

Van Cise also worked on NASA’s TITAN and OSO groups, specifically beginning in 2000 when he joined NASA.

The OSO group coordinates station repair, maintenance and assembly operations.

"Since the first flight director, Chris Kraft, was selected during the Mercury era, 77 men and women have served as flight directors. One of the new flight directors will be the 80th in the history of U.S. human spaceflight," said John McCullough, chief of the Flight Director Office. "This is a very strong class with senior flight controllers who have an average of 10 years of flight control experience, and nearly two years of group lead management experience."

McCullough continued, “This group will help us transition the knowledge and experience from the existing human spaceflight programs into the development and execution of our exploration program with the new Orion spacecraft in the years to come."