page_title: Flight controller
section_title: Flight director
hierarchical_section_title: Flight controller / Common flight control positions / Flight director
caption_attribution_description: Eugene F. Kranz, flight director, is shown at his console on May 30, 1965, in the Mission Operations Control Room in the Mission Control Center at Houston during a Gemini-Titan IV simulation to prepare for the four-day, 62-orbit flight. (NASA Photo S-65-22203.)
context_page_description: Flight controllers are personnel who aid space flight by working in such Mission Control Centers as NASA's Mission Control Center or ESA's European Space Operations Centre. Flight controllers work at computer consoles and use telemetry to monitor various technical aspects of a space mission in real time. Each controller is an expert in a specific area and constantly communicates with additional experts in the "back room". The flight director, who leads the flight controllers, monitors the activities of a team of flight controllers, and has overall responsibility for success and safety.
  The various national and commercial flight control facilities have their own teams, which may be described on their own pages.
context_section_description: Leads the flight control team. Flight has overall operational responsibility for missions and payload operations and for all decisions regarding safe, expedient flight. This person monitors the other flight controllers, remaining in constant verbal communication with them via intercom channels called "loops".
caption: NASA chief flight director Gene Kranz at his console on May 30, 1965, in the Mission Operations Control Room, Mission Control Center, Houston.
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