Firing Room 1 on the Kennedy Space Center in Florida has witnessed the liftoff of a number of historic Apollo missions, together with the one in 1969 that put people on the moon for the primary time, and the maiden flight of Space Shuttle Columbia.
Next month, if every thing goes to plan, a launch control crew will file into the storied NASA nerve heart, a beehive of workstations and screens behind angled glass home windows that present a direct view of the launchpad, to oversee the ultimate preparations and kickoff of Artemis II. The mission goals to ship 4 astronauts farther than people have ever earlier than traveled from Earth as half of the primary crewed spaceflight across the moon in 50 years.
Astronauts famously need to have the “right stuff.” They are chosen from hundreds of candidates for the traits and expertise suited to the stresses of spaceflight and the mettle crucial for the rigorous coaching and grueling simulations that put together astronauts for any situation they could encounter.
But who has the Artemis II astronauts’ backs as they make the 10-day, roughly 685,000-mile journey across the moon, aboard a rocket and spacecraft that haven’t carried people earlier than? And what does it take to work within the high-stakes, behind-the-scenes roles that preserve astronauts protected and the mission on monitor?
“It’s very psychologically challenging. The decisions that you’re making have life-and-death consequences,” mentioned Wayne Hale, who served as flight director on the NASA Mission Control Center at Johnson Space Center in Houston between 1988 and 2003. Hale supported 40 house shuttle missions whereas main flight operations.
Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, launch director of NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems program, will shepherd the liftoff of the primary human mission of the Artemis program. She takes cost of the official countdown beginning 49 hours and quarter-hour earlier than launch. Blackwell-Thompson will give the go from Firing Room 1 at Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island, close to Cape Canaveral, Florida.
As NASA’s first feminine launch director, Blackwell-Thompson leads a crew that manages propellant loading and follows the launch commit standards: an in depth set of guidelines that determines whether or not the launch goes forward or stands down. These components embody temperature, wind, cloud cowl and the general well being of the launch automobile.
Blackwell-Thompson helmed launch operations in late 2022 for Artemis I, the uncrewed mission that took a 25 ½-day journey across the moon and again. The check flight set the stage for the extremely anticipated crewed mission that might carry off as quickly as April 1. With people on board, Artemis II guarantees to be “incredibly exciting,” she mentioned. During the ultimate minutes of countdown, an intense hush envelops the room, she added.
“So as we count through those milestones of terminal count, the room is incredibly quiet in the firing room, because the team is focused on their data. They’re focused on their system. They’re focused on their go, no go or their launch commit criteria and ensuring that we are ready to go fly,” she defined within the September 12, 2025, episode of NASA’s “Houston We Have a Podcast,” referring to the launch standing test when the flight director queries every crew to find out whether or not the mission can transfer ahead with liftoff.
For launch, Blackwell-Thompson, who has labored at NASA for 30 years, mentioned she has a practice she calls “green for go” that includes sporting a selected inexperienced accent.
“They’re just very inexpensive little beaded bracelets that I put on,” she mentioned within the podcast. “It is my symbol. It’s my symbol to myself. It’s my symbol to my team that when I slide that bracelet on every morning, it is my way of saying I am all in. I am here to give it my all.”
Once the countdown hits zero and the towering Space Launch System rocket carrying the Orion spacecraft lifts off, Blackwell-Thompson fingers over to Jeff Radigan, Artemis II lead flight director at Mission Control Center at Johnson Space Center in Houston. There, he and a crew of flight administrators will oversee the mission till the Orion capsule splashes down within the Pacific Ocean 10 days later.
The crew practices the handover so usually “it feels just like a simulation,” mentioned Rick Henfling, one of the flight administrators who shall be at mission control in Houston for launch.
“The only thing that’s different is out of the corner of my eye, I can see in one of the TVs that there’s fire coming out of the rocket,” he informed NCS.
However, because the lead Artemis II entry flight director, Henfling is primarily liable for the other finish of the mission: making certain the Orion spacecraft returns dwelling safely.
In the primary 4 hours after launch, Henfling mentioned the crew shall be checking that every thing is working because it ought to aboard the Orion spacecraft because it ventures into house with people on board for the primary time.
“We did the Artemis I mission back in 2022 and we got a good shake out of Orion from a guidance, navigation, control and propulsion system perspective, but we really don’t know how Orion’s going to behave as a spacecraft,” he mentioned. “How well will it do with removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere? How well will the toilet perform?”
For instance, the spacecraft will vent urine overboard, and NASA steerage programs want to make sure that course of doesn’t have an effect on the spacecraft’s trajectory. Similarly, because the astronauts breathe oxygen on board, carbon dioxide must be vented, which places a drive on the automobile.
“We have analytical models that are computer-based and they’re informed by the best test data that we have, but until you get the spacecraft with people inside, in the vacuum of space, you really don’t know what the true spacecraft response will be,” Henfling mentioned.
A pivotal second for the mission will come about 24 hours into the journey when Orion’s propulsion system fires up for the translunar injection burn, which can ship the spacecraft on the trajectory wanted to fly by the moon, Henfling mentioned.
“The big milestone is the TLI decision — is the spacecraft performing well enough to send four people out potentially further than any people have ever gone before?”
The solely time mission control in Houston will lose contact with the spacecraft — other than a quick blackout throughout reentry — is when Orion goes behind the moon, an occasion scheduled for Day 6 of the mission. “All of our communication depends on having a line of sight with Earth,” Henfling mentioned. “It’s nerve-racking, because whenever you don’t have communication with the spacecraft, you don’t have insight as to what’s going on,” he added.
However, Henfling famous that the roughly 45-minute interval will “be a special moment for the crew,” and the hope is that the astronauts might be able to take a placing photograph in the identical vein as the enduring Earthrise image captured in 1968 by Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders.
“If we’re working through a problem, we will give the crew the best information that we have to continue over those 30 to 45 minutes without communication, and we’re confident that when it gets on the other side and the moon is not blocking them anymore, we’ll pick up where we left off,” Henfling mentioned.
The flight director doesn’t routinely converse to the astronauts on board. That position falls to the capsule communicator, or CapCom, who ensures that the crew receives clear and concise communication. Artemis II’s lead CapCom is NASA astronaut Stan Love. After becoming a member of the astronaut corps in 1998, he served as CapCom throughout a number of house shuttle missions to the International Space Station.
Henfling will, nonetheless, converse with the crew on the day earlier than the mission’s most important stretch: when Orion reenters Earth’s ambiance and splashes down within the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego.
“Typically when you hear CapCom talking, it’s very operational in nature, formal, but we’re going to just have a conference, and the crew will have had time to study for their procedures for entry, and this will be a chance for them to ask questions in a private setting, a little bit less formal,” he defined.
The Orion crew capsule will enter Earth’s ambiance — a degree generally known as entry interface — at about 25,000 miles per hour (about 40,200 kilometers per hour), transitioning from the vacuum of house to a dense ambiance and enduring temperatures about half as sizzling because the floor of the solar at practically 5,000 levels Fahrenheit (2,760 levels Celsius). However, in contrast to spacecraft coming back from the International Space Station, there is just one shot, with no possibility to attend, for instance, for climate circumstances on the bottom to enhance.
“I’m super confident in the team’s ability to execute,” Henfling mentioned. “But once we hit entry interface, and the heat starts building up on the heat shield, there’s no turning back. We’re coming in and, you know, we’re going to safely finish that mission.”
Radigan, NASA’s lead flight director for Artemis II, agreed that touchdown is uniquely difficult. “It’s always one of those, you know, operations that gets your heart pumping, and we all kind of hold our breath until we see the parachutes out and the crew hitting the water at a reasonable speed,” he mentioned within the July 25, 2025, episode of NASA’s “Houston We Have a Podcast.”
“I’ll be sitting and watching Rick and his team do it, but we’ll be, we’ll be ready for it,” he added.
Several former NASA engineers and a former astronaut have expressed concern to NCS that the underside half of the Orion spacecraft, referred to as the warmth defend, which is designed to guard the astronauts from excessive temperatures, isn’t protected.
This very important half is almost an identical to the warmth defend flown on Artemis I, which returned from house with its 16.5-feet extensive defend pockmarked by sudden injury — prompting NASA to research the problem.
Henfling mentioned the house company had modified the touchdown trajectory to “make it a more benign environment on the heat shield.”
“I have a lot of confidence in the engineering that was done and the testing that was done,” he mentioned. “And so when I sit console on entry day, the heat shield is not going to be something that I’m thinking about.”
Flight administrators practice together with the astronauts for a lot of totally different situations, with a current train simulating a hearth on board the spacecraft simply earlier than entry interface. Henfling, who has been a flight director since 2015, can be no stranger to difficult missions. He was in cost of the launch and touchdown of the check flight of Boeing Starliner in 2024. While astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams arrived safely on the International Space Station, they didn’t return with the spacecraft after it skilled issues.
“We practice a lot of different scenarios, but there’s always failure of imagination things,” he mentioned. “Our training is not necessarily to train through all the thousands of things that could go wrong. It’s more to train the team to think critically and to have the critical thinking skills to respond to unforeseen problems.”
Henfling doesn’t have any private good luck charms, however resting on his console at Mission Control in Houston shall be a particular fabric patch given to him by the Artemis II astronaut crew. One facet options the moon, the opposite Earth.
“As soon as we get past the furthest point in the mission and start coming back home, … we’re all going to turn our patches around with Earth prominently displayed.”
Henfling will do his greatest to go dwelling and sleep in the course of the 10-day mission, however he mentioned it shall be laborious to remain away even when he’s not on responsibility on the console.
“I think once each of us wakes up, we’re going to want to get back to the Johnson Space Center and get back involved with the mission,” he mentioned.
“This is a show of what’s possible when humanity works together towards a common goal. And I’m super excited to show that off to everybody.”
NASA’s Artemis program is sending people into deep house for the primary time in additional than 5 a long time. Sign up for Countdown newsletter and get updates from NCS Science on out-of-this-world expeditions as they unfold.