In the Nov. 15, 2019 installment of our Thought Leader Series, the center hosted a special evening with Apollo flight director Glynn Lunney. One of the flight directors during the Apollo Era, Lunney helped bring home Apollo 13 and was chief of the Apollo flight directors.

Glynn Lunney had a long and storied career, beginning when NASA was founded in 1958 and ending nearly 30 years later during the Space Shuttle Program.

Lunney began his NASA career at the Cleveland Lewis Center in 1958 and was soon supporting the Space Task Group in Langley, Virginia where the Mercury Project was taking shape. He was selected to be a flight director for Gemini and Apollo, operating on many of those flights. Most notably, he orchestrated the return home plan for Apollo 13 and was chief of the Apollo flight directors.

Lunney then went to NASA Headquarters as deputy associate administrator for space flight and then one as associate administrator for operations before moving back to Houston to manage the Space Shuttle Program from its second flight through June 1985.