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Allison Mjoen, the NASA Artemis ground operations manager who watched SLS launch with her children

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Allison Mjoen, NASA’s operations manager for the agency’s Exploration Ground Systems Program, is the latest engineer profiled in NASA’s “I Am Artemis” series, published on 16 October 2026. Over a 20-year career at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, she has supported the Space Shuttle Program, the International Space Station and now Artemis, NASA’s programme to return humans to the Moon. On 1 April 2026, she watched the SLS rocket launch with her children on a clear day on Florida’s Space Coast.

Allison Mjoen: NASA's operations manager for the Exploration Ground Systems Program at Kennedy Space Center
NASA's operations manager for the Exploration Ground Systems Program at Kennedy Space Center Photo: NASA/Amber Jean Notvest (public domain).

What Allison Mjoen does for Artemis

As spacecraft offline operations manager, Mjoen coordinates the work that happens long before launch day, NASA said. Supporting the ground systems’ senior vehicle operations manager, Matt Czech, she develops integration plans and oversees ground operations for Artemis vehicle processing, with a focus on booster and Orion spacecraft operations. That means making sure the many teams that stack, test and prepare the rocket and capsule work in the right order and to the right standard. For her children, NASA wrote, the launch was a chance to see what their mother had helped make possible.

Key Facts

  • Role: operations manager, Exploration Ground Systems
  • Base: Kennedy Space Center, Florida
  • Career at NASA Kennedy: 20 years
  • Past work: Space Shuttle, ISS payloads, Artemis I
  • Profile published: 16 Oct 2026

From Space Shuttle cabins to space station payloads

Mjoen began as a flight crew systems engineer with United Space Alliance on the Space Shuttle Program, where her team handled mission-specific cabin set-ups, including food, spacesuits, cargo and payloads. After the shuttle retired, she worked on the space station as a payload integration engineer, linking experiment investigators with the groups building their hardware. She later joined NASA’s Operations Project Engineering Office and led the Spacecraft Payloads Integration and Evolution Element for Artemis I, then worked in the firing room as a certified operations project engineer during that mission. Earning that certification was a milestone, she said, and using it during real-time operations brought a new level of responsibility.

Lessons she carries into Artemis

“Early on, I thought every decision had to be perfect, but everything is an opportunity to learn,” Mjoen told NASA. She said working at the integration console showed her the value of preparation, teamwork and trust. “Every decision and communication directly supported the integrated team’s ability to execute safely,” she said. Looking ahead, she compared Artemis with the first Apollo Moon landing, which she said captured the imagination of people around the world. “Artemis is creating that kind of moment for a whole new generation, and this time to stay.” “I get to collaborate every day with incredibly talented and dedicated people who are all working toward the same goal,” she said, adding that it is rewarding to know their joint efforts contribute directly to the mission.

Why It Matters: Moon missions depend on ground teams as much as astronauts, and profiles like this show the engineering careers behind each Artemis launch.

Also on TrendDesh: Artemis II heat shield: NASA finds just 9 char-loss spots against 103 on Artemis I · Stephen Cash named director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, returns to where he began in 1982

Source: NASA: I Am Artemis: Allison Mjoen · NASA Artemis

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