Ryan Joyce’s drive to comprehend the unknown started when he was a child and his grandfather handed him a pair of magnets. As he played with them, he thought they were like magic.
“I don’t understand it, but I want to!”
This desire set him on a path towards physics and engineering, which led him to pursue a degree in aerospace engineering at the University of Maryland.
During college, Joyce’s quest for knowledge drove him to participate in several NASA student challenges. These challenges—sponsored by the Space Mission Analysis Branch (SMAB) at NASA’s Langley Research Center—prepared him to join NASA as a Pathways student working on human spaceflight.
Now as a permanent member of SMAB, Joyce spends his days helping advance NASA’s return to the Moon under Artemis.
“Humanity is moving forward. We’re trying to learn how to live on and off this planet,” said Joyce. This includes the Artemis human landing system (HLS), and Joyce aims to always keep “looking at the big picture to remember what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.”
In his current role as deputy lead for the HLS Integrated Performance team, Joyce ensures that NASA’s mission design and requirements for both crew and cargo landers are closely aligned and enable industry competition. Using a systems analysis perspective, Joyce and his team can better understand how choices made in designing human landing systems today will influence exploration plans for years to come.
“We have a lot of learning left to do,” Joyce said. His work on HLS will support not only the upcoming missions to the Moon, but also the even more challenging coordination required to send humans to Mars.
Read more about Ryan Joyce’s HLS work here: https://sacd.larc.nasa.gov/smab/smab-stories/ryan-joyce/
