Jeff Radigan, the lead flight director for the Artemis II mission, sat at a table at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida alongside his lunar compatriots for a news conference in January. Fittingly, he wore a tie with the phases of the moon on it.
Radigan, a NASA veteran of more than 20 years, was one of a team of flight directors on the uncrewed Artemis I mission that orbited the moon in 2022. Now, he will lead the most complicated NASA mission in more than 50 years.
At that point in January, NASA was considering launching Artemis II's historic mission around the moon and back in just a matter of weeks. A reporter asked if the manned mission was being rushed, even bringing to mind the disastrous Challenger explosion. Radigan fired back.
"This is not a rush, and I actually take quite an issue with you using that word," Radigan said. "That's not where we're at right now. ... There's a lot of preparation going on, but there absolutely are constraints."
As lead flight director, it is his responsibility to make sure nothing like the Challenger — or any of the other ill-fated missions in NASA's history — happens. From the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Radigan and a crew of several other flight directors will watch the Artemis II mission around-the-clock to ensure it follows the minute-by-minute plan laid out for it.
"Every console in Mission Control is monitoring something," said David Alexander, director of the Rice University Space Institute. "They’re all working in concert to monitor these complex systems. And the flight director is the one who’s getting that input from everyone and is the one who ultimately makes the decision."
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Artemis II is NASA’s first moon-bound mission with a crew of astronauts since 1972, at the end of the Apollo program. On its 10-day mission, Artemis II will launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, orbit the Earth twice, and then fly to the moon. From there, the four-astronaut crew will fly around the moon once before returning to Earth.
Technical issues have delayed the mission multiple times, both since its original planned launch and in recent weeks. After a successful dress rehearsal, engineers found a helium leak in one of the rockets, requiring NASA to roll the rocket and spacecraft back from the launch pad for repairs. The agency said it solved the leak earlier this month and plans to conduct a flight readiness review this week.
When Artemis II launches — as soon as April 1 — flight directors will guide virtually the entire process as the rocket and spacecraft leave the Earth; enter the planet's high orbit; shoot for the moon; coast by its far side; and, eventually, return to the Earth's Pacific Ocean.
As lead flight director, Radigan is responsible for developing the mission's timeline, training the flight control team, and helping them carry out the mission. Judd Frieling will lead the ascent flight control team. He served as an Artemis I flight director and is responsible for overseeing the Artemis II crew's ascent into space. At the end of the 10-day mission, Rick Henfling will lead the Orion spacecraft's splashdown off the coast of San Diego.
"We’re going to go perform a test flight," Radigan said at a news conference last year. "A test flight doesn’t have one singular objective. It’s got many of them. But in order for, at least me personally, to call this mission fully successful, we need to go fly by the moon and bring the crew home safely and welcome them back with open arms."
The role of flight director is one of the most storied in NASA's legacy. Christopher Kraft was the first flight director for NASA who created and developed the space agency's Mission Control. Kraft is credited by NASA with having created the mission planning and control processes for spaceflight, such as go/no-go decision making, space-to-ground communications and problem solving.
"It's really stood the test of time," Fiona Antkowiak, one of the flight directors on Artemis II, said in an interview with Houston Public Media. "Kind of the core principle where you have a single flight director, and when they are on console, they have final authority to make any decision needed for a quick turnaround decision has really stuck true."
Gene Kranz is arguably the most recognizable flight director, largely thanks to actor Ed Harris’ Oscar-nominated portrayal of him in the 1995 film "Apollo 13," which depicted the eponymous mission.
Kranz was a flight director during several missions during the Apollo era, including the historic Apollo 11 lunar landing and the ultimate Apollo 17 mission, the last time humans have ventured to the moon. He served as lead flight director during Apollo 13, guiding the oxygen-deprived spacecraft back to Earth.
"Vigilance is really important to us," Antkowiak said when asked about the stress of the job. "And so I would say we never are relaxed when we’re on console. But the good news is that not every minute is as stressful as those scenarios."
By contrast, the ideal scenario for a flight director might be one characterized as being boring.
"They want everything to be working as they’ve trained for, as they’ve expected it to work," Rice's Alexander said. "They want the systems to do their job. They want the astronauts to do their job."
When it comes to Artemis II, Antkowiak said there are two crucial decisions flight directors will have to make to move the mission forward. The first, naturally, is the decision to launch, which will factor in many leaders' perspectives to decide on whether or not Artemis II is ready to launch.
Further into the mission, the other key decision is whether or not to embark on the "trans lunar injection burn." After the Artemis II spacecraft orbits the Earth, it will have to fire up its engines to put it on a trajectory toward the moon. Houston's flight directors will be the ones to make that call.
"Our teams have pre-worked on what we call flight rules that define criteria for being ‘go' for those burns," Antkowiak said. "We’ll be assessing the vehicle against those as well as, of course, using judgment to make sure that we are able to make a smart choice and hopefully send it."
At the end of the film "Apollo 13," Jim Lovell, the crew's commander portrayed by Tom Hanks, takes a moment to recognize the flight controllers in Houston — those "thousands of people who worked to bring the three of us home." Hanks then asks, "When will we be going back, and who will that be?"
The film came out in 1995, which was 23 years after the end of the Apollo program. Now, more than 30 years later, the answer may be in sight.
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