Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) has announced that Ken Bowersox will join the Company as vice president of the newly formed Astronaut Safety and Mission Assurance Department — he will be co-located in Houston, Texas, and SpaceX Headquarters in Hawthorne, California.

Bowersox joins SpaceX with more than 19 years of experience at NASA. Selected to the astronaut corps in 1987, he has flown five times on NASA's Space Shuttle, serving as pilot, commander, and mission specialist, and once on a Russian Soyuz, where he served as the flight engineer during descent. During his five orbital missions, Bowersox has logged more than 211 days in space, including five and a half months aboard the International Space Station (ISS), where he was the mission commander of the 6th expedition. He was also a crew member for the first two Hubble Space Telescope repair flights and two United States Microgravity Laboratory flights. Subsequent to his mission aboard the ISS, Bowersox served as the director of the Johnson Space Center's Flight Crew Operations Directorate, where he was responsible for the NASA Astronaut Office and all aircraft operations at the Johnson Space Center. Most recently, Bowersox has been working as an independent aerospace consultant, serving on the NASA standing review boards for Space Shuttle, ISS, Constellation, Orion and the Constellation Suit System.