Station Nation: Aaron Rose, Cold Stowage Mission Manager
Aaron Rose, the Cold Stowage Mission Manager for NASA’s Crew and Thermal Systems Division, continues to oversee temperature‑controlled cargo for the International Space Station. Based at Johnson Space Center, Rose has spent 18 years with NASA after beginning as a Jacobs Engineering co‑op in 2008. The March 26 2026 profile highlights his role in packing, launching, and retrieving scientific payloads that require portable coolers, freezers or refrigerators, and notes his participation in more than 50 ISS resupply flights to date.
Rose’s responsibilities span the full flight cycle, coordinating hardware, operations and personnel from launch at Kennedy Space Center to splashdown recovery. He has supported missions on SpaceX’s Falcon 9, including the CRS‑3 return flight, as well as Axiom and Northrop Grumman cargo launches. During the Artemis I era, Rose was present in the Vehicle Assembly Building while the Space Launch System was integrated. The cold‑stowage team validates that temperature‑sensitive experiments remain within required limits, installs the units in spacecraft, and expedites post‑landing sample delivery to researchers worldwide. Over his tenure, Rose has contributed to the successful transport of dozens of microgravity experiments that cannot be performed on Earth.
The capability to maintain precise thermal conditions is integral to the ISS’s scientific agenda and to NASA’s broader deep‑space objectives. Reliable cold‑stowage enables research on protein crystallization, pharmaceutical development and materials science, all of which inform technologies for lunar habitats and future Mars missions. By sustaining a continuous flow of temperature‑sensitive payloads, Rose’s work supports the station’s 25 years of uninterrupted human presence and reinforces the logistics network that underpins international partnerships and commercial cargo providers.
