Michael Sarafin currently serves as an Artemis Mission Manager at NASA Headquarters. In his current role he provides senior technical leadership to the Moon to Mars program office portfolio for human test flights involving elements of the Artemis program including the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, Orion deep spacecraft, the Human Landing System, the lunar Gateway, lunar extravehicular and surface systems, and Exploration Ground Systems at the Kennedy Space Center. In his current and previous roles he represents the United States government and NASA’s human spaceflight programs and partnerships around the globe during mission planning and operations execution. 

Experience to date totals sixty-five (65) NASA human spaceflight missions across multiple human spaceflight programs (Artemis, Orion, ISS, Space Shuttle and Shuttle-Mir). To date he has served in various mission roles during one (1) Artemis mission, one (1) Orion test flight, forty-three (43) Space Shuttle missions, and twenty (20) International Space Station (ISS) Expeditions of American, Canadian, European, Japanese astronauts and Russian cosmonauts. His experiences encompass all mission flight phases (launch, earth orbit, lunar orbit, rendezvous, docking, landing, recovery), as well as ground-based testing to enable those flights. 

Sarafin was central to the highly successful Artemis I mission conducted in 2022. Artemis I was the maiden flight test of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, launching an uncrewed Orion spacecraft launch from the Exploration Ground Systems at the Kennedy Space Center into a lunar Distant Retrograde Orbit and return to Earth. During mission preparation, Sarafin served as senior technical leader in the Artemis program developing and integrating mission requirements, mission planning, operations and flight readiness to prepare for execution. During the mission he served as the chairman of the Artemis Mission Management Team (MMT), a diverse body of program, industry partner, international partner and technical authority personnel responsible for oversight of the mission across all phases of flight (launch, in-space and recovery). As the MMT Chair, he served as the decisional authority including launch decision authority, and as the senior agency risk acceptance official including requirements change authority. 

Prior to his current role, Sarafin accumulated a decade of experience as a NASA Flight Director with overall responsibility for safety and success of assigned Space Shuttle, International Space Station (ISS) and Orion flight test team operations from within Mission Control, located in Houston, TX. Thirty-three (33) of his missions were supported as a Flight Director (12 Space Shuttle, 20 International Space Station, 1 Orion). Prior to service as a Flight Director, Sarafin served for a decade as a Space Shuttle Guidance, Navigation and Flight Control officer (call-sign “GNC”) accumulating thirty-one (31) missions of experience from Mission Control-Houston. 

Additionally, in 2003, Sarafin supported numerous Space Shuttle Columbia accident investigation efforts by performing parallel flight reconstruction and accident investigation activities, in-the-field recovery efforts followed by support of the Space Shuttle program return to flight efforts.