Cenker worked for 18 years at RCA Astro-Electronics, and its successor company GE Astro Space, on a variety of spacecraft projects.

He was responsible for ensuring the spacecraft could interface with multiple rockets, including the Delta, Space Shuttle, and Ariane launch vehicles.

As documented in Crewmember Bill Nelson's book "Mission: An American Congressman's Voyage to Space", and as reported in Spaceflight Insider, "The launch attempt on Jan. 6, 1986 was halted at T-31 seconds.

The weather was perfect for the scheduled launch at dawn, but a failure of a liquid oxygen drain valve prevented it to close properly.

However, Nelson says that what really happened was that "the valve did not close because it was not commanded to close",[13] and that it was later determined that the Rogers Commission, investigating the series of mistakes that forced this second scrub, recognized that the problems were personnel-related, caused by fatigue from overwork: One potentially catastrophic human error occurred 4 minutes 55 seconds before the scheduled launch of mission 61-C on January 6, 1986.

Fortunately, the liquid oxygen flow dropped the main engine inlet temperature below the acceptable limit causing a launch hold, but only 31 seconds before lift-off.

[19] The next Shuttle launch, ten days after the return of Columbia, resulted in the destruction of the Challenger with the loss of all aboard, including Cenker's counterpart from Hughes Aircraft, civilian crew member and Payload Specialist Greg Jarvis.

[23] NASA's Payload Specialist program has been criticized for giving limited Shuttle flight positions to civilian aerospace engineers such as Cenker and Greg Jarvis (killed aboard Challenger), politicians such as Bill Nelson, and other civilians such as Teacher in Space Christa McAuliffe (also killed aboard Challenger).

[24] The concern was that these people had replaced career astronauts in very limited flight opportunities, and some may have flown without fully understanding the level of danger involved in a Shuttle mission.

Cenker's last two years with RCA Astro-Electronics and its successor GE Astro Space were spent as Manager of Payload Accommodations on an EOS spacecraft program.

After leaving GE, Cenker served as a consultant for various aerospace companies regarding micro-gravity research, and spacecraft design, assembly and flight operations.

[27] Cenker continues to make periodic public appearances representing NASA and the astronaut program,[28][29][30][31] including at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in March 2017[6], January 2023,[32] and April 2024.

During an interview to discuss his scheduled appearance at The New Jersey Governor's School of Engineering & Technology at Rutgers University in July 2019, Cenker talked about his education at Rutgers, his work at RCA, his shuttle mission, his connection to the Challenger crew, his thoughts on the importance of the Apollo 11 mission, and of space travel in general.

What I want students to ask themselves is “how can I do what I love and how can that benefit spaceflight?”[34]The Cradle of Aviation in Garden City, New York invited Cenker to participate in its "Moon Fest" planned for July 20, 2019, exactly fifty years after the Apollo 11 landing.

[3] In a July 2019 interview discussing the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11, Cenker commented that he believes that humans have an innate desire to explore, saying "It’s not learned... It’s in your genes".