David F. Mitchell

David F. Mitchell is the Associate Administrator for the Mission Support Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. He began his career in 1984 with the U.S. Navy testing rocket motor systems and aircrew escape systems. He joined NASA in 1987, working on transportation systems for instruments and spacecraft, including the Cosmic Background Explorer, which resulted in Nobel prize-winning science. 

From January 2022 to December 2024, Mitchell was NASA’s chief program management officer. In this role, he was responsible for strengthening the agency’s oversight, management, and implementation of program management policies, processes, and best practices.  

Mitchell previously served as acting director of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, from January 1, 2023, to April 6, 2023. In this position, he focused on ensuring a seamless transition as the agency searched for a permanent center director. 

Much earlier in his Goddard career, Mitchell worked on launch vehicle systems, including the Delta II, Scout, and Pegasus launch vehicles. In 1997, he moved to the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) program as chair of the GOES-N series Source Evaluation Board, and stayed with the program until 2005 as project manager. After that, he went on detail assignments to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida and NASA Headquarters in Washington. In 2006, he worked as a NASA Congressional Fellow focusing on space and science issues. 

Mitchell became deputy associate director of Goddard’s Earth Science Projects Division in late 2006 and concurrently served as the project manager for the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) proposal effort. Upon MAVEN’s selection in 2008 for development, he served as project manager through the mission’s Mars orbit Insertion in 2014. 

From 2015 to 2021, Mitchell was the director of Goddard’s Flight Projects Directorate, the portfolio of which included more than 80 missions, from small satellites to flagship missions such as the James Webb Space Telescope. At the same time, he served as the formulation project manager for the Comet Astrobiology Exploration SAmple Return (CAESAR) mission, from 2014 to 2019. Between 2021 and 2022, Mitchell was the director of Goddard’s Engineering and Technology Directorate. 

Between 2015 and 2022, he served as the senior champion for Goddard’s African American Advisory Committee, for which he was awarded NASA’s Equal Employment Opportunity Medal in 2020. He also was awarded NASA’s Outstanding Leadership Medal twice for his work on the GOES and MAVEN projects and received the Presidential Rank Award twice. 

Mitchell graduated with a bachelor’s in mechanical engineering from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1984 and a master’s in engineering administration from the George Washington University in 1989. He completed the Council for Excellence in Government program in 2002, is a 2004 graduate of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government Senior Executive Fellows program, and graduated from NASA’s Senior Executive Service Candidate Development Program in 2006.