123: NASA Lessons Learned with Mike Ciannilli

Casual Space

People often ask me what it was like as a “NASA” insider. On this episode of Casual Space, one of the very best of the best, Michael Ciannilli joins me to share highlights and lessons learned from more than 25 years at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Michael “Mike” Ciannilli is NASA’s manager of the Apollo, Challenger, Columbia Lessons Learned Program, where he helps innovatively and effectively share NASA’s lessons of the past to help ensure future success.

Inspired by Mike and his work? Check out these videos from NASA EDGE, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvOHNIbVBRI and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtowgLH-HyA

And read more about Mike here:

As manager of this agency level program, Ciannilli oversees the Columbia Research and Preservation Office, which preserves all Columbia artifacts, as well as the loan program, which loans out Columbia artifacts for research and academic purposes. In addition, this role involves giving lessons learned tours for NASA engineers, scientists, interns, executives, commercial partners and others. During these tours, he uses the stories of Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia to share what has been learned from these past mishaps to prevent reoccurrence in future applications. Ciannilli also does lessons learned events at Kennedy Space Center where he works to bring these past experiences and the emotions behind the accidents alive through multimedia and storytelling; these events will be expanding across the agency. In addition to his main activities supporting the agency, Ciannilli also collaborates with outside media organizations like National Geographic to share these lessons learned with a wider audience. Prior to his current role, Ciannilli was the lead of the Columbia Research and Preservation Office, a position that is now encompassed in his new role. He also led the creation and development of the Forever Remembered project for Columbia and Challenger at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. Previously, he served nine years as NASA Test Director for the Space Shuttle Program at Kennedy, responsible for processing oversight of the space shuttle orbiters and ground support systems including launch and landing facilities. In addition, this responsibility included leading the launch team through launch countdown activities. He also was the Landing Recovery Director during that time, responsible for leading contingency operations during launch countdown and landing activities, including flight crew recovery. In 2003, during the Columbia accident recovery, Ciannilli flew extensively onboard helicopters across Texas supporting air search operations and Columbia artifact recovery.Before joining NASA in 2005, Ciannilli was a contractor for the United Space Alliance where he spent eight years as a Test Project Engineer, leading the testing and engineering integration during processing of the shuttles and launch operations, and before that he was the lead of the Launch Countdown Simulation Team, which developed simulations to train the launch team. As the simulation lead for the Mission Management Team, he also trained the leadership of the Space Shuttle Program. Prior to this he worked as a fuel cell systems engineer assigned to Columbia. He also worked as an intern for Pan Am World Services at Cape Canaveral Air Force Base and taught high school.

He has received numerous awards throughout his career, including the astronauts’ Silver Snoopy, NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal, NASA Program Leadership Award, Launch and Landing Leadership Award, Launch Countdown Simulation Contingency Leadership Award, NASA Quest Outreach Award and a Columbia Recovery Team Award, among many others.

Ciannilli has a Bachelor of Science in space science from the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Florida. Ciannilli grew up in Syracuse, New York. He enjoys spending time with his family, surfing, swimming, boating, sailing, hiking, skiing and film production.