CHAPTER 4 DAY IN THE LIFE: THE MAKING OF A MISSION 88 and this work ethic is reflected in the competence and teamwork statements in the Foundations (See Introduction). The operations team conducts two major ceremonies after each mission. The first—and, to many, more meaningful—is the hanging of the plaque. Since the days of project Mercury, the flight director would pick the person, persons, or team that did the most outstanding job during the mission and let the honoree(s) hang the mission plaque (Figure 25) that had been displayed at the flight director’s console during the flight. Actually, two plaques—crew mission patch and ISS mission patch—were awarded for a given Space Shuttle assembly mission. Figure 25. Lead OSO Kyle Brewer (left) and Lead ECLSS Officer John Garr (right) hang the 20A mission and module patches in the control room following the successful mission in 2010. The second ceremony was held at Space Center Houston—the Johnson Space Center visitor center. Here, the crew showed video and narrated highlights from the mission. Various individual and team recognitions were awarded at this ceremony. However, a few minutes of recognition and thanks by the managers of the Space Shuttle and ISS Programs and the lead flight directors never fully reflected the immense amount of effort that went into the mission. Although the ceremony marked the official end of one mission, the teams (Figure 26) were already poised to start the process all over again. Later that year, when NASA was trying to figure out what to do after President Obama redirected the Constellation Program, some officials at the space agency wrote a press release stating that Node 3 could be detached from the space station and incorporated as part of a new vehicle that would go to an asteroid. Flight Director Robert Dempsey shook his head, laughed, and uttered the words that the whole team was thinking: “If they only knew how hard that would be.”