Mission Specialist

A Mission Specialist (MS) is a position held by certain NASA astronauts during Space Shuttle missions. A Mission Specialist is assigned to a limited field of the mission, such as for medical experiments or technical quests.

Other functions on board are Pilot, Flight Engineer and Mission Commander. Some Space Shuttle missions included Payload Specialists in addition to Mission Specialists. While a Payload Specialist was selected for a single specific mission, a Mission Specialist was selected as an astronaut first, and then assigned to a mission.

Mission Specialist is abbreviated by NASA as MS.


National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
Policy and history
  • NACA
  • National Aeronautics and Space Act
  • Paine
  • Rogers
  • Ride
  • Space Exploration Initiative
  • Augustine
  • U.S. National Space Policy
  • CFUSAI
  • CAIB
  • Vision for Space Exploration
  • Aldridge
  • Augustine
    General: Space Race
  • Administrator and Deputy Administrator
  • Chief Scientist
  • Astronaut Corps
  • Budget
  • Spin-off technologies
  • NASA TV
Robotic programs
Past
  • Hitchhiker
  • Mariner
  • Mariner Mark II
  • MESUR
  • Mars Surveyor '98
  • New Millennium
  • Lunar Orbiter
  • Pioneer
  • Planetary Observer
  • Ranger
  • Surveyor
  • Viking
  • Project Prometheus
Current
  • Living With a Star
  • Lunar Precursor Robotic Program
  • Earth Observing System
  • Great Observatories program
  • Explorer
  • Small explorer
  • Voyager
  • Discovery
  • New Frontiers
  • Mars Exploration Rover
  • Mars Scout
Human spaceflight
programs
Past
  • X-15
  • Mercury
  • Gemini
  • Apollo
  • Apollo–Soyuz Test Project
  • Skylab
  • Shuttle–Mir
  • Space Shuttle program
  • Constellation program
Current
  • International Space Station program
Future/planned
  • Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS)
  • Commercial Crew Development (CCDev)
Individual
featured missions
Past
  • COBE
  • Apollo 11
  • Mercury 3
  • Mercury 6
  • Magellan
  • Pioneer 10/11
  • Voyager 1/2
  • Galileo
  • WMAP
  • WISE
  • Space Shuttle
Currently
operating
  • MRO
  • Mars Odyssey
  • MESSENGER
  • Dawn
  • New Horizons
  • Kepler
  • International Space Station
  • Hubble Space Telescope
  • Spitzer
  • RHESSI
  • SWIFT
  • GALEX
  • THEMIS
  • Mars Exploration Rover
  • Cassini
  • GOES 14
  • Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter
  • GOES 15
  • RBSP
  • SDO
  • Aquarius
  • Juno
  • GRAIL
  • MSL
  • NuSTAR
Future
  • NPP
  • James Webb Space Telescope
  • MAVEN
  • WFIRST
  • InSight
  • OSIRIS-REx
  • MMS
  • Unnamed 2020 rover
Space Comm and Nav (SCaN)
  • Space Network
  • Near Earth Network
  • Deep Space Network (Goldstone
  • Madrid
  • Canberra)
NASA categories
and lists
  • NASA personnel
  • NASA programs
  • NASA probes
  • NASA images
  • NASA Social (formerly Tweetup)
  • NASA
    List of NASA Astronaut Groups
  • List of astronauts by selection
  • List of NASA aircraft
  • List of NASA missions
  • List of NASA contractors


Famous quotes containing the words mission and/or specialist:

    “The mission of men there seems to be, like so many busy demons, to drive the forest all out of the country, from every solitary beaver swamp and mountain-side, as soon as possible.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    “For what Harley Street specialist has time to understand the body, let alone the mind or both in combination, when he is a slave to thirteen thousand a year?”
    —Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)