I Am Artemis: Elkin Norena

NASA’s Elkin Norena has helped the agency launch more than a dozen space shuttle missions – that’s more than a dozen crews to low Earth orbit and more than a dozen historic missions. They were missions that helped build the International Space Station, that provided a final servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope, and that performed critical science experiments that improved life right here on Earth. Today, he continues that work as the manager of the Resident Management Office for SLS at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, helping launch America’s rocket – the SLS (Space Launch System) – and the Orion spacecraft with its international quartet of astronauts on the Artemis II mission to fly by the Moon and return home. Elkin Norena, who serves as an SLS resident management officer at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, stands in front of an RS-25 engine.NASA As resident manager, Norena provides onsite SLS support for NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems team that is responsible for preparing, stacking, testing, and launching SLS and Orion. He is also the eyes and ears for the SLS Program, providing an avenue of communications back to the program, which is managed at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. It is the continuation of a childhood dream to be part of space exploration. “When I was a kid in New Jersey, I watched a space shuttle launch in class one day,” said Norena. “When I watched the power of launch and the brave astronauts going to explore, I knew I had to be a part of that one day. I wanted to become an astronaut.” The dream to join the space program led the Colombia native to the University of Central Florida in Orlando, where he majored in computer engineering, just miles from the Space Coast and in view