Michael J Horkachuck
Manager, NASA's Commercial Crew Program Residents Office, SpaceX
Mr. Michael J. Horkachuck is currently the Manager of the on-site government resident office at SpaceX for NASA's $2.6B Commercial Crew Program contract; primarily focused on Dragon 2 development and testing for Human missions to the ISS. Mr. Horkachuck was the Project Executive for the NASA groundbreaking $396M, milestone based Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) project; from the start to the finish of the Space Act Agreement with Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX). In this capacity, he led all NASA efforts in conjunction with his industry partner to establish and demonstrate capabilities and services that can open new space markets, support the crew and cargo transportation needs of the International Space Station (ISS) and provide future services for exploration. He led and managed NASA’s partnership with SpaceX in NASA’s pursuit of non-government vehicles and commercial services to provide crew and cargo transportation for human space flight.
Over his 37 year career in Aerospace (32+ years at NASA), his previous positions included: Chief of Development Testing and Verification Strategies in the Constellation Program; Manger of Payload Hardware Engineering and Integration in the International Space Station (ISS) Program, responsible for interface requirements, definition and verification of all NASA sponsored payloads going to ISS and managed the development of low temperature science Freezers for ISS; Lead Engineer for a large experiment to create artificial gravity on the space station (2.5M Centrifuge) at Ames Research Center; Project Engineer at a high power density battery/power supply company and Design Engineer at G&H Technology- connectors and inflight disconnects for Trident II, Milstar and other unnamed vehicles.