Dana D. Purifoy

Dana D. Purifoy was the director of Flight Operations at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, retiring in 2019. He was responsible for the center’s fleet of 22 highly modified manned and remotely piloted aircraft flown on worldwide science, astronomy and aeronautical flight research missions, as well as the flight and ground crews who fly and maintain them.

Experience

In 2013, Purifoy became the acting director of Safety and Mission Assurance responsible for flight and range safety, aviation and institutional safety, including planning, directing and coordinating all activities necessary to ensure that proper safety policies, objectives, processes and standards are established and maintained. He was appointed director from December 2013 to 2015.

A former U.S. Air Force test pilot, Purifoy initially came to NASA as a research test pilot in 1994. During 11 years with NASA, he flew a number of significant research projects, among them the X-53 Active Aeroelastic Wing, the Advanced Control Technology for Integrated Vehicles project on a highly modified NF-15B, research experiments on NASA’s Dryden (now Armstrong) Flight Research Center’s F-15B aeronautics test bed and the Supersonic Laminar Flow Control project on a modified F-16XL. He also flew the NB-52 mothership during launches of the X-38 prototype crew return vehicle and the X-43 hypersonic scramjet vehicles, experiments on the F/A-18 Systems Research Aircraft, the Convair 990 space shuttle tire tests and piloted the X-36 tailless fighter agility project and X-56 Flutter Suppression project.

Purifoy left NASA in 2005 to become Calspan Corporation’s chief pilot. During five years with Calspan, he completed several unique test efforts related to operation of remotely piloted aircraft in the national airspace, the F-16 autoland, automated air refueling and automated multiple intruder avoidance projects. He also was an instructor test pilot in Calspan’s variable stability Learjet, the VISTA NF-16D and F-16D aircraft for all major test pilot schools.

Purifoy returned to Dryden in 2010 and remained on flight duty, piloting the Gulfstream III (G-III), T-34C and TG-14 aircraft. He accumulated more than 5,000 hours of flight time in more than 100 different aircraft.

Purifoy completed Air Force pilot training in 1979. Prior to becoming a test pilot, he flew F-111 and F-16 aircraft in Great Britain and Germany. Purifoy served as a project pilot in the joint NASA/Air Force X-29 Forward Swept Wing research program and also served as project pilot and joint test force director with the Advanced Fighter Technology Integration/F-16 program, both located at Dryden. Prior to those assignments, Purifoy was chief of the Systems Evaluation Branch at the Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base, where he also served as an instructor on the T-38, F-16 and A-37. His last assignment in the Air Force was test flying U-2 aircraft.

Education

Purifoy earned a Bachelor of Science, summa cum laude, and a Master of Science in aerospace engineering with honors from the University of Michigan. Purifoy is a 1987 distinguished graduate of the French Test Pilot School, which he attended as an Air Force exchange pilot.