Shannon Gregory, chief of flight operations at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, stands in front of one of the agency’s support helicopters inside a hangar at Kennedy’s Launch and Landing Facility in Florida. Credit: NASA/Cory S. HustonHost Andres Almeida: When Artemis II lifted off on its historic mission on April 1, 2026, NASA pilots took to the skies to track the rocket, image it, and stand by for anything that may be needed. One of those pilots was Shannon Gregory, chief of flight operations and lead pilot at Kennedy Space Center. He heads the team that supports launch and splashdown recovery operations, when they happen off the coast of Florida, from the air.
What’s it like to witness a launch from the cockpit of your aircraft? Let’s hear it from somebody who knows the experience firsthand. This is Small Steps, Giant Leaps.
[Intro music]
Welcome to Small Steps, Giant Leaps, the podcast from NASA’s Academy of Program/Project & Engineering Leadership, or APPEL. I’m your host Andres Almeida.
Shannon Gregory joins us from his office at Kennedy Space Center.
Host: Shannon, welcome.
Shannon Gregory: It’s great to be here. Thank you.
Host: As chief of flight operations and lead pilot, what does all that entail?
Gregory: Yeah, great. I oversee all flight activities as pilot, also aircraft readiness. I ensure safety and efficiency with our mission sets and execution. I also work instrumentally into integrating your NASA and commercial interagency partners together where we can do that.
And also, my big goal is also to build a culture of safety, standardization, and excellence. And that includes not just the Kennedy Space Center, but UAS at five centers. So, Stennis, Michoud, and also Marshall and KSC for UAS operations.
Host: UAS, can you explain that for our listeners?
Gregory: Yeah, that’s, that’s unmanned aerial systems. So, it’s basically our drone fleet that we have at five centers. So, to integrate that operation is also a part of my role here.
Host: Excellent. Yeah, Cape Canaveral is pretty busy these days. Do you fly during uncrewed launches, too?
Gregory: Yeah, that’s a great question. We actually do more of our launch operations now, some more launch support. So generally, it’s crewed support. So, any crewed launch, or any additional launches that have high value payloads as well. So, we’ll be a part of some of that.
Some are DoW (Department of War) type of payloads, crewed, and generally, anything that is required and deemed high value.
But most of our work is on the launch side, so that’s ensuring that w …
