Susan Schuh has dedicated her career to helping humans adapt to life outside Earth.
As the Flight Crew Integration Operational Habitat (OpsHab) team in NASA’s Human Health and Performance Directorate at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Schuh leads efforts to understand what it is like to live and work in space. It turns this information into progress by documenting astronaut feedback to improve current and future spaceflight missions.
Not only does it support crews aboard the International Space Station, but it also provides critical information for NASA’s preparations to explore more of the Moon’s surface than ever before through the Artemis missions.
Her team supports debriefing of astronauts during flight and after flight, capturing and analyzing feedback to help NASA apply lessons learned. They also manage one of NASA’s most valuable habitability tools, the crew feedback database. With more than 115,000 entries over 25 years of ISS missions, it is the only comprehensive, searchable record of crew observations in existence. Every comment, from how astronauts sleep to how supplies are organized, becomes part of NASA’s collective learning.
“The crew feedback database is my pride and joy in the business,” Schuh said. “It has been an invaluable resource for operations and development and continues to lend itself to future exploration.”
Schuh’s path to NASA began with a mentor who saw her potential early on. While studying psychology at Flagler College in St. Augustine, Florida, she was introduced to human factors research conducted by Dr. Gerald Gamache, whose work on the effects of the Chernobyl reactor explosion helped shape her understanding of how people function in complex environments.
While earning her master’s degree in human factors and systems at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida, Schuh began her first internship at NASA in 2000. “Even from the early days of my internship at Johnson, I knew I was meant to be part of this community that supports humans living and working in space,” she said.
Schuh left Johnson briefly to support human systems integration in the Navy and Air Force, but returned in 2006. Since then, she has continued to shape how astronauts experience living and working in space.
Her mentor’s influence extended far beyond Schuh’s artistic work. “Dr. Gamache was also a community builder outside of his professional life, and I like to think some of that has influenced me,” she said. This inspiration led her to found the Johnson Parenting Community in 2020, which now has more than 600 members who share support and resources for working parents throughout the center.
Schuh has learned that her work is about more than just data, it’s about people. “Being purposeful in taking the time to listen and being willing to learn and collaborate has made a huge difference for me,” she said. “Over time, I learned a lot about persistence. This work required it, which encouraged people to use the crew feedback database and keep the feedback process enabled and robust.”
She’s very proud of her family, known as Team Schuh — her husband Scott, who works on the Orion Ascent Abort Mode team, and their three daughters, Wilhelmina, Lorelei, and Frannie. “This is why I continue to strive for balance between work, family and everything in between,” she said.
Finding that balance has been a constant struggle for her. “One of the biggest professional challenges I have faced, especially in the past 14 years since the birth of my eldest daughter, is finding work-life balance,” she said. “I often find it difficult to create boundaries and set them daily at a reasonable time. I won’t claim to have the secret recipe, but I’m definitely working on it.” Schuh credits the Johnson Parenting Community for helping her and others along the way.
Outside of work, Schuh finds peace on the water and in nature. Her father, an underwater engineer, taught her to scuba dive when she was 11 years old. “We have taken some amazing multi-day trips together, including multiple visits to Cay Sal Bank,” she said. “He is my best diving buddy, and I look forward to more diving trips with him.”
Looking to the future, Schuh hopes to pass on the same sense of purpose she found at NASA to the next generation. “Make relationships and support them. It’s always nice to be kind,” she said. “Be true to yourself and your values. Tell the people you admire how and why they inspire you.”