“I was deeply, deeply honored,” Petro says in an
online video meeting with Space Coast Living. “That
was my initial reaction, followed swiftly by, ‘Wow,’
being struck by this amazing responsibility that is
now on my shoulders.”
Petro leads America’s premier multiuser spaceport
during its largest expansion in missions since
the shuttle program ended in 2011. In her center
director’s welcome online, she notes that the
“dreams of a nation” rooted in America’s space
history are resurging as NASA plans to send
humans back to the moon by 2024 and eventually
to Mars and to continue launching commercial crew
missions to the International Space Station.
If awed by the job’s enormity, she has already proven
her mettle. As the center’s first woman deputy director
for 14 years, she helped lead the senior manage-
Known for many achievements
throughout her career, Janet
Petro leads the nation’s
premier spaceport as its first
female director.
As a child, Janet Petro
and her family wended
their way through
palmettos on the dunes
of Satellite Beach to
see rockets blast off
carrying Mercury and
Gemini spacecraft. The pristine shore was
near their home, miles from the John F.
Kennedy Space Center where her father
worked on those missions as an engineer.
Now nearly six decades later, Petro, 61,
watches launches from the close range
of Merritt Island and with the gravitas
of a NASA leader. On June 30, she was
appointed the center’s 11th director
and the first woman to serve as such
by NASA administrator Bill Nelson.
16: SPACE COAST LIVING | SPACECOASTLIVING.COM
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JASON HOOK
/SPACECOASTLIVING.COM