Notre Dame alum crucial part of Artemis II mission

SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- This month's Artemis II mission captured the attention of people around the world, and a Notre Dame grad is one of the people who was crucial to the success of the mission. 

Kelsey Young, a 2009 Notre Dame graduate, was an integral part of NASA's Artemis II 10-day lunar flyby mission. She spoke at the university Tuesday night, explaining some of the intricacies of the missions and what part she played in it. As the senior flight controller, she was responsible for lunar science and geology objectives. Young is also on track to be the senior flight controller for future Artemis missions. 

Kelsey graduated from Notre Dame's college of engineering before earning both a master's and Ph.D. at Arizona State. The Notre Dame alumna says her path toward a career in space came partially thanks to two professors in her foundational engineering courses.

"It was through them that I was kind of made aware of this field planetary geology; the idea that you could go out and look at places on earth and learn something about other planetary surfaces just totally had me hooked, like literally from the very first class of the very first geology course I ever took."

She also told us that her time in South Bend helped prepare her for the rigorous training that comes with being a part of missions at NASA. 

"It's a lot of just building the basics, building your experience, every experience I had ultimately was training even though it wasn't billed as such at the time, but to be a flight controller at Artemis, you have to go through classroom trainings, you have to go through simulations where you actually sit on console, and you're supposed to have a bad day, they throw a lot of malfunctions at you so you understand how to interact there. Also on the training side, we got to train the crew themselves, so that was also a really impactful experience," said Young.

Even with the immense amount of preparation that went into the mission, once the real thing was happening, she still felt some nervousness. But after confirmation of a safe splashdown, it was all smiles from Kelsey and her crews. 

"I don't think I really breathed a full breath until they had been splashing around in the Pacific for a little bit; I want to see everybody looking good, I want to see smiling faces, but once that happened, it was a collective sigh of we accomplished something really, really challenging as a team of thousands and there is so much power and emotion in that. And now that it was over, there was just a massive amount of relief, pride, every emotion in the book," said Young.