Brandon Bethune – Deputy Project Manager, NASA

Brandon Bethune is the Deputy Project Manager for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Operations Project at Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC).  Brandon joined the JWST Operations Project in 2024.  Previously, he served as the Deputy Project Manager-Technical for NASA’s Exploration Space Communications (ESC) Division’s Near Space Network (NSN) that provides space communications and navigation services from government and commercial providers to NASA, other government agency, and international partner robotics, launch vehicles, and human space flight missions.

Brandon began his career in 2009 at GSFC within the Flight Dynamics Facility as the operations lead for the Conjunction Assessment Risk Analysis (CARA) team.  He worked closely with mission managers, Flight Operations Teams (FOT), the Joint Space Operations Center (JSpOC), the United States Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM), Foreign Space Agencies (CNES, JAXA, CONAE), and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) performing real-time analysis for several Space Situational Awareness events for 50+ missions.  In this capacity, he developed and implemented an automated preliminary analysis system providing near real-time assessments as well as led the development of a rigorous training program for new operations staff.  He then transitioned to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) where he served as the Deputy Project Manager in NOAA’s Office of Satellite Ground Services (OSGS) on the Environmental Satellite Processing and Distribution System (ESPDS) development project which provides processing and distribution of science data products for both JPSS and GOES-R series satellite programs. While at NOAA, Brandon supported additional initiatives within OSGS for determining innovative and cost-effective means of providing satellite ground system capabilities and services with the utilization of enterprise and commercial cloud services.  When moving back to NASA in 2019, he served as the Technical lead for NASA’s ESC’s Near Earth Network (NEN) Initiative for Ka-band Advancement (NIKA) project responsible for managing the implementation of a NEN Ka-Band subnetwork consisting of five antennas located in Alaska, Virginia, Svalbard, and Chile to support the upcoming Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) and NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) missions.

Brandon holds a Bachelor’s of Science in Aerospace Engineering and a Master’s of Science in Aerospace Engineering with a specialization in Astrodynamics from Auburn University.