KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. — As the Crew-2 astronauts gear up for the historic flight scheduled for early Friday, one woman's role is essential to keeping the crew safe.

​"Our teams have a great working relationship," says Carla Koch, who, as NASA deputy manager for commercial crew program​ is the link between the space agency and its commercial crew partner SpaceX.

Now that astronauts are heading to space again, it's key that SpaceX's Crew Dragon is safe to fly.

"We are making sure they can support crew for the days needed to support space station missions," Koch says.

"And we want to make sure our astronauts are safe."

After arriving on the Space Coast, the Crew-2 astronauts went through a ”dry” dress rehearsal, going through the steps as they will on launch day.

Taking those steps allowed the team to tweak the timeline, if necessary, to ensure even more safety.

Koch worked on the Space Shuttle program, the last time astronauts were sent into space from a U.S. launch site.

Even though the push now has moved from a government to commercial focus, the aim for safety hasn't changed.

It's even more important because this Crew-2 mission involves a reused capsule that first flew on the Demo-2 mission in May 2020, and a reused Falcon 9 booster that launched the Crew-1 astronauts in November 2020.

"NASA and SpaceX reassessed the certification, and that's thousands of pieces of paper," Koch says.

For Koch, playing a role in launching astronauts to orbit is like living a dream.

"And you see them hours later on the space station, it's kind of surreal," she says.