From Earth orbit to the Moon and Mars, explore the world of human spaceflight with NASA each week on the official podcast of the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Listen to in-depth conversations with the astronauts, scientists and engineers who make it possible.

On episode 353, the Artemis II crew’s chief training officer discusses her career at NASA, the complexity of astronaut training, and what it takes to prepare the quartet for their mission around the Moon. This episode was recorded on July 22, 2024.

Transcript

Host (Courtney Beasley): Houston, we have a podcast! Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center, Episode 353, “Developing Artemis II Training.” I’m Courtney Beasley and I will be your host today. On this podcast, we bring in the experts, scientists, engineers, and astronauts, all to let you know what’s going on in the world of human spaceflight. NASA is preparing to return humans to the Moon for the first time in more than 50 years. Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, and Mission Specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hanson will venture around the Moon on Artemis II, which will be the first crewed mission in the Artemis campaign, NASA’s path to establishing a long-term presence on the Moon for science and exploration. The mission is planned to be a 10-day flight test of NASA’s foundational human deep space exploration capabilities, the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft for the first time with astronauts. Artemis II builds on these successes of the uncrewed Artemis I mission in 2022 and will demonstrate a broad range of capabilities needed on deep space missions.

Today we are thrilled to talk to Jacki Mahaffey, the chief training officer for the Artemis II crew. Jackie plays a crucial role in ensuring that the Artemis II crew is ready for the challenges ahead, from rigorous simulations to the latest space travel techniques and technologies, Jackie’s work is at the heart of preparing the crew for their journey, 280,000 miles from Earth around the far side of the Moon. We will dive into Jacki’s fascinating career, the intricacies of astronaut training, and what it takes to prepare for a mission to the Moon. So sit back and relax as we take a journey behind the scenes of Artemis II.

[Music]

Host: Jackie, thank you so much for coming on Houston We Have a Podcast today.

Jacki Mahaffey: Thanks for having me.

Host: So before we dig in, I’d love to help our listeners understand a little bit more about who you are and how you got into your current position as the chief training officer for the Artemis II crew and what your position entails. So let’s go ahead and start there. Can you start by telling us a little bit about your background and how you became the chief training officer for the Artemis II crew?

Jacki Mahaffey: Yeah, so growing up, I loved airplanes. I loved flying things of all kinds, which I joked, actually wrote a paper on in high school once suggesting it might be genetic. My grandfather was a naval aviator and then actually worked for North American and Honeywell on Apollo control systems. So that’s a cool callback to space in my family. And then my dad had his private pilot’s license and would take me up and we’d fly over our neighborhood. So I loved airplanes. I was comfortable in them. And I think I have the typical interest in space that a lot of kids have, but maybe a bit more so because my mom, who is an engineer, actually came to my school when I was a kid and ran this program called Toys in Space where we got to play with these little gadgets, little toys, and then we saw video of shuttle astronauts playing with the same toys in space. And so from an early age, I kind of got to see, you know, what was going on with the space shuttle and what were some of the things that the astronauts were doing. But ultimately, I loved math and I had a great physics teacher in high school, which led me down the path of engineering.

Host: That is so cool. I did not know any of that about you, and I feel like I’ve been working with you now for a little over a year. So that’s so cool to see your connections to space and flying and all of that and how it has correlated here. So once you got to college, what did you end up studying and majoring in?

Jacki Mahaffey: Yeah, so I majored in aerospace engineering. I think that the love of, you know, flying things, but also because it dabbles in so many different engineering topics, you know, you get a little bit of the mechanical and the thermodynamics, the chemistry, all these different pieces that I got exposed to. But with one, you know, the really cool application of airplanes and space.

Host: So what did your early career look like out of college?

Jacki Mahaffey: Yeah, so what might be a little bit interesting is that I didn’t expect to have anything to do with space. I took a lot of electives in college related to propulsion and jet engines, and I was going to go off and design jet engines, and I just happened to see an internship down here at JSC that was shuttle ascent and entry. And so I thought, hey, that has aerodynamics, it has rockets. And I was exposed to the world of Mission Control and space flight operations. And the clincher was probably that towards the end of that internship, I got to sit next to Flight Director Richard Jones in an ascent and entry sim and just the rapid-fire failures and the communication cadence were really exciting and I wanted to be a part of it.

Host: So how many different positions did you do before you got to this one? How did you end up here as a CTO?

Jacki Mahaffey: I hired on full-time as what was just being, I guess, invented or developed, as a mission control position called integration and systems engineer, which is a really ambiguous name for the position that did a lot of the integration and teamwork with our commercial crew, commercial cargo partners. So SpaceX Dragon and Cygnus, and the Japanese HTV vehicle, as they were all very first coming online to deliver cargo to the ISS, I was part of the team that worked with them to develop how are they going to do that? How is the communication system going to work? How are their power and data systems going to interface with the ISS? And so I started off on this, you know, developmental things, the, you know, making up new things and how are those new things going to work? And so that I think has been a big part of my career path as well as I really enjoyed training new flight controllers in my group on how to do a good job in that position. And so that led me to the flight ops training branch as a chief training officer. And that’s where I first continued to support commercial crew development, led ISS training simulations. And one of the highlights before my current assignment was getting to train some of the 2017 astronaut class.

Host: Oh, awesome. And then when did you get the assignment to the Artemis II mission?

Jacki Mahaffey: I think it was about three years ago now, although the time is kind of blending into each other. I had been in a more of a lead role over our Artemis training support as a whole, and then I transitioned to this mission lead role, which was really exciting for me because it let me be ultra-focused on the nitty gritty of one specific mission and be truly responsible for shaping like what the training would look like and how successful it would be for this particular mission.

Host: So is most of the team who you started with then still part of the team that you’re on?

Jacki Mahaffey: In terms of our training office?

Host: The training team.

Jacki Mahaffey: Yeah, so my colleagues in the training branch, you know, we’ve kind of grown and evolved over the time period. We’ve definitely had to bring on some more of our team to focus on the Artemis side instead of the ISS side. So that’s been nice to kind of share the wealth and get more people learning and interested on the Artemis side. But a lot of the instructors, all the individual training trainers, instructors that are in these, like all the different systems of the vehicle and all these different areas that we have to train the crew on, a lot of them have been doing this for those three years or the time that I’ve been doing it. So it’s been really nice to, you know, have this really similar same group of people that we’ve been developing this over this course of this time.

Host: And then what does a typical day look like for you in your role?

Jacki Mahaffey: I would say part of the reason why this training job was so attractive to me was because there’s a lot of variety to it. And so if anything else, the most consistent thing might be that every day is different than the day before it, in terms of what I might be doing. So, could be anything from meeting with that instructor team, planning out what we’re going to be doing, sitting in their practice session runs, pretending to be a student for them, giving them feedback as they are developing their training, coordinating with our other NASA partners that are working on training for the crew. So for example, our exploration ground systems counterparts at KSC. And then, you know, one of the more fun things, of course is actually observing and, and note taking during the crews’ training events themselves. So,  all sorts of different, different tasks and just every day and every week can look different.

Host: Well, I want to talk a little bit more about the training program itself, starting with how do you even get a training plan started for a Moon mission after all of these years?

Jacki Mahaffey: Right around the time that I was assigned to this mission, we kicked off what we call a training needs analysis, which is really a fancy way of saying that we had a bunch of brainstorming sessions and we systematically thought through what is it that the crew is going to need to do during the course of this mission from, you know, the time they are getting their suits on until they’re getting pulled out of the capsule by the recovery team. And we list out all the different tasks and then think about, well, what are they going to need to know in order to do those tasks? And we take those giant lists and then we reorganize them into lessons basically. And okay, here’s how we’re going to teach all of those things.

So the goal is to focus on what do they really need to know and be able to do. One of my favorite moments with my team in working through all that was a day that we spent together basically all got into one room, and then everyone brought printouts, like one page for every lesson they had planned, and we literally laid them out on the floor and so everyone could see where everyone else was thinking they were going to teach different things in terms of the course of the training flow and started thinking about what comes first, what comes second, and that led to kind of our general organization of the flow.

Host: That’s so cool. That’s kind of how I pictured it, everybody kind of laying their ideas out and then putting one big plan together. That’s awesome. So how long ago did the training plans really start for an Artemis II crew?

Jacki Mahaffey: So the Artemis II crew officially started training in June of 2023. So we’ve been going for a while now, but they aren’t necessarily training full-time, so, you know, it depends on the week, but you know, they got some fundamentals related to the mission and the systems. And then as we have different aspects of the training developed and the operations teams and mission control have written those procedures, then we bring in, you know, the next set of, hey, let’s talk about this aspect of the mission and train for that and kind of slowly work our way through it.

Host: You’ve mentioned the space station a little bit in teams that you have worked with, so I was just curious to see how would you say that the training has evolved from space station missions to adapt to the goals and the challenges of Artemis?

Jacki Mahaffey: Yeah, that’s a really good question. I don’t know if I would describe it so much as evolving as we’re just in a very different place than ISS training is today, since ISS training has been happening for over 25 years, so, you know, where they are in the ISS world is focusing on streamlining the training, simplifying it, focus on payload operations and, you know, there’s a very established list of training activities. And then we kind of go through it and pick list for each crew member what’s appropriate for them to get. In Artemis and with Artemis II, this is the first time we’re doing these lessons and our engineering and operations teams are still refining how things will work and how we’ll operate them. And so we are much more flexible in terms of presenting something to the crew that is, you know, maybe the 90% solution and saying, we still have these open questions, or here’s today how we think it’s going to work. And of course, we’re going to discover more things as we get into simulations and we bring the crew, you know, actually to perform those procedures and we learn more as it goes.

Host: So what are some of the core training components that you all have weaved into the Artemis II training program?

Jacki Mahaffey:  We have loosely organized our flow by mission phase. So we have, like I mentioned, some fundamentals up front just about the mission and the basic different subsystems on Orion and SLS. And then we kind of take a step approach where we look at on-orbit operations and so, you know, that covers a lot of kind of the steady state, how a lot of the systems work. And then we get into some of the more dynamic and complex phases like entry and landing and ascent. And so these are all building on each other and getting more dynamic and complex as we go along. There’s also a host of topics like medical and exercise systems, suits, and just living day to day on board, which our fancy word for that is habitability. So we got really creative and so far we’ve put them in a module we call “other,” but maybe we can think of a better name for that as we go along. But yeah, all these different aspects to kind of create some mental model at least of what the flow looks like. And then finally, the pre-launch and post-landing aspects are actually trained by our NASA’s exploration ground systems team in KSC.

Host: I’ve also seen something in the training that I think most people wouldn’t even think of, and that’s the photography lessons. I don’t think you lead those, but how are those beneficial for this Moon mission for them to be able to work the camera the way that they should?

Jacki Mahaffey: Yeah, that’s been really interesting because there’s aspects just to how do you operate the camera, which is pretty similar to how we train ISS crews for operating the camera. It’s a camera that we’ve used on ISS as well. But there’s completely different aspects. Like you’re in this very small space and so maybe you can’t use your, you know, you have to use your wide-angle lens to be able to see everything in the capsule and here’s how it might distort the image, or hey, if we’re going to use our big zoom lens out the window to look at the Moon, what kinds of settings are going to help us get a good picture of the Moon? So just like a different application of a lot of the same things that we’ve been doing.

Host: That’s really cool. I can’t wait to see those photos as, of course, I’m sure the world can’t wait to see them as well. I was also interested to learn what some of the most challenging aspects are of the training. I know you mentioned you’re all kind of learning as you go, what works and what doesn’t work and what additional things you need, but what else has been a little challenging outside of that?

Jacki Mahaffey: Yeah. I think, as you said, part of it is that how do we organize the flow because it’s more than just, you know, what does it look like on paper? But I think one of the challenging things always for astronauts going through training, but in particular for a mission like this where everything is new, is having to put all the individual pieces together. You know, you might go to a lesson on Tuesday for this topic and Tuesday afternoon for another and, you know, some other aspect over here. And so trying to see how they all work together and how they all apply. And so, from the training team side, when we think about how do we organize that flow, how do we time things, when do we schedule things? Do we do like a detailed focus on a particular subsystem, or do we keep it broader and try to show the big picture first and what overall is this going to look like so that they have context? All of those things we’re questioning and trying to find a model that works such that the crew doesn’t have to do quite as much of that mental, putting everything together for themselves.

Host: And then what about physical fitness? I know that this is just a 10-day mission, but how big of a role does physical fitness play into their training and this mission?

Jacki Mahaffey: Well, you need really good core strength to sit properly in a classroom all day, night. It threads throughout. I would say there are certainly actual aspects of the training and some training for those same aspects in-flight that are physically demanding, right? Wearing the suit and moving in it. And especially moving in it when you have these close quarters, like getting in and out of your seats or moving around in the Orion cabin, there’s some things that the crew will need to be able to do while they still have their suits on and those things take a little bit of practice and just definitely that physical fitness to be able to do those comfortably without getting too tired out. But, you know, one of the ground rules of training is that we don’t get all their time, so they get dedicated time to go work out and have that time to kind of focus on their health as well. And although we try to sneak a little bit of training in there, so for example, some of their physical fitness sessions could be with the Orion exercise device, so they will get to actually go have practice sessions even outside their training on the exercise device.

Host: And then how does the training for this crew differ from what it will be for a Moon landing crew?

Jacki Mahaffey: Well, the training that the Artemis II crew will get is like one, basically one piece of the puzzle for the future missions, you can think about it. So, which is a little overwhelming to think about that as challenging and as this one piece is, it’s just one part of what will be many pieces in the future. And so, you know, that’s why we want to kind of work out the kinks with the Orion training now as much as possible so then the future crews can kind of, you know, we have this, we know how to deliver this effectively and they can focus on what are those next pieces, what’s the training going to look like for those next pieces? But it’s going to be so such a busy timeframe to train for those future missions that the crew members will be a little bit more specialized in terms of focus areas. So there’ll be crew members that focus on flying SLS and Orion and crew members that focus on landing on the Moon and doing the Moonwalks.

Host: Now that you’ve had the opportunity to run through several different phases of the mission with the crew up close and personal, what are you most excited about for this mission?

Jacki Mahaffey: I think it’s still, you know, the crew talks a lot about taking those photos or getting those views out the windows. And so, for me it’s going to be the candid interior shots of watching them get those views or those shots and like just seeing them experience that after all the hard work to get there.

Host: That is a different perspective. You want to see them doing all of the things that they’ll be doing inside the capsule instead of seeing what they’re looking out at, which I know most of us are the most excited to see. So that’s really cool to hear that you have that different perspective. I wanted to talk a little bit about technology and how has the training technology evolved since you have been at NASA to where it is now?

Jacki Mahaffey: Yeah, that’s an interesting question. I would say there’s definitely a lot of things and certainly a lot of principles that are threaded throughout and still very much the same. You know, we know that these simulations where we’re running with the simulated software and spacecraft and the crew and mission control altogether, like how effective that kind of training is and, you know, that was happening, you know, ever since we’ve been here at JSC. But some of the innovations that we’re utilizing, this may not be the glamorous answer you’re looking for, but I think all the things that grew really quickly during the pandemic in terms of remote, doing things remotely and virtually, teaching virtually, that will come into a lot of value, as I mentioned, you know, all of the different things that future crews are going to have to train on, they will have the opportunity to, you know, even if they’re traveling somewhere for one aspect of the training, being able to, you know, remote into a different training and still have it be effective, right?  Having the tools that it’s still effective. And then, you know, like for example, our Orion simulation is really, you know, I probably have colleagues that would cringe at me saying this, but relatively plug and play in terms of we have this, you know, this package that is both the vehicle flight software, but also a simulated environment. And we have different places we use it. So we have our rapid prototype lab where we can get the latest updates very quickly and see what that looks like on crew displays and test out procedures. And we also can put it into our mission training center, which has our high-fidelity Orion cockpit mock-up and the realistic connections to communicate with MCC, so we can kind of bring it to these different places and get different value out of it for training.

Host: And kind of on the same note, do virtual reality tools play a role in your training?

Jacki Mahaffey: Yeah, we have definitely explored them a little bit for even things related to, you know, an Orion capsule or Artemis II in terms of, you know, visualizing what does the interior of your capsule look like, or doing some evaluations about what your displays and controls and views out the windows look like. But I would say that the really promising, I think the really promising and exciting area for virtual reality will be our lunar surface ops training. So, you know, being able to visualize what a particular landing site might look like on the Moon and get a feel for navigating it and describing it and exploring that area.

Host: Since you have the opportunity to work so closely with the crew, I wanted to get some personal insights from you. What has it been like to work with this crew?

Jacki Mahaffey: Just a lot of fun. Early on, I told them that, you know, I was having a lot of fun that this is my dream job and Victor Glover actually joked to me that, “Hey, nightmares can be dreams too, you know,” but so far no nightmares.

Host: Good. I’m so glad. What do you think they all bring to this mission?

Jacki Mahaffey: So I think it’s kind of actually hidden there in your question. They all bring something a little bit different, and they all bring a lot between them. They’ve flown on SpaceX Dragon, they’ve flown a couple of Soyuz, and in Jeremy’s case, you know, not yet flown in space, but that in itself is actually a really valuable perspective to bring to the table. And they’ve also had these really amazing leadership roles that required them to see and understand beyond just the single mission or even just a specific program. And so, you know, when they come to training their questions and discussions during that training, I see all these different approaches and perspectives where they’re pulling on different aspects of things that the training or ops teams might, they might still be working out and, and I see that their emphasis is thinking not just about this mission or what things are going to be like for them, but what are the Artemis goals as a whole and how can they set things up best for, you know, their colleagues on the next mission, for example. And so I really think that if we had four people with very similar backgrounds or personalities, we would be missing so many opportunities to make the training more effective and make the mission more successful.

Host: I’m sure you have a ton of memorable moments with them so far in training, but can you share one or two of your favorite moments with them so far?

Jacki Mahaffey:  So this might be the question where I get myself into trouble, but let’s see. So the crew was in a lesson where they were practicing how to go in on the Orion displays and basically change what the upcoming engine burn should do, you know, how it was going to target, where it was going to aim for, how long it was going to burn. And by this point, our excellent flight dynamics instructors knew that, number one, the crew had a good sense of humor, and two, that any options to get them closer to the Moon for that fly by would be their dream come true. And so they, in the class, gave them an example change that may not have been realistic, but it was fun and it let the crew adjust their burn in a way that would make the lunar fly by really close to the Moon surface. And so afterwards, Jeremy jokingly tucked away that reference sheet with those parameters on it, you know, like, oh, we’ll just keep this one handy. And people might remember back to when the crew was first named, they did some, you know, fun public interviews and talk shows, and there was kind of this running joke about letting Jeremy get to push a button during the mission. And so after that lesson where they got to change the burn, I got one of those little plastic easy buttons and recorded it when you pushed it to say, “Now targeting lunar orbit.” And I thought Jeremy would get a kick out of it for a day. You know, it was just this like little cheap gimmick. But instead, he or maybe one of the other crew, brought it over to our main simulator and stuck it on top of the display panel. So now, whenever they’re in there for a lesson, if there’s a pause in the action or something awkward has happened, inevitably one of them will just quietly reach up and push the button that’s hilarious and then just move on without talking about it.

Host: I love that. I think we all need one of those buttons in our life. So just getting to see this crew train and all of the different crews that you have worked with, what qualities have you seen are essential for an astronaut to succeed?

Jacki Mahaffey: I think for a training program like Artemis II where it’s the first iteration of, you know, every single lesson, everything is trying it out for the first time, it just really takes starting with an understanding of that a lot of these lessons are going to be rough around the edges, and we may leave with as many questions as we, you know, manage to answer during the lesson with procedures to go refine and follow on training to add. And that obviously has the potential to be pretty frustrating. And so I think crew having both grace toward the training team, but also the willingness to provide a lot of that specific feedback so that we can get it right for the next training iteration and for the mission itself is crucial.

Host: So seeing all of the various training programs where they are now and looking forward, how do you see the training programs evolving for future missions and beyond?

Jacki Mahaffey: Yeah, so I mentioned this a little bit before, but just it is a little overwhelming when I pick my head up from focusing in on Artemis II and remember that this everything I’m doing, which is, you know, just the SLS Orion portion is just one of the training puzzle pieces that future missions are going to have to put together. And so, you know, my colleagues have been working on what that puzzle will look like and how it will fit together. But you know, we’ve got this piece plus training on the lunar lander, the new spacesuits, how to go execute a Moonwalk, which in itself is a combination of a bunch of things. And then Gateway as well. And so, you know, you can see that one of our biggest challenges is how do we train crew members for all these things without it taking like five years? And so that’s a puzzle that we’re working on right now and, you know, we’ll continue to evolve as we, you know, start working on and actually going and doing that training.

Host: And then how do you see yourself contributing to missions beyond Artemis II?

Jacki Mahaffey: Well we’re already mentoring some newer folks in our group on what we’re doing with Artemis II, and I think that’s really important to be able to kind of maintain that corporate knowledge and pass on the lessons learned because there’s nothing worse than working really hard on something and becoming really smart and wise in it, and then forgetting to share that with anyone and seeing them go through all the same pain. So, hopefully I’ll be able to, you know, pass those things on and set people up. And I think beyond that, for me personally, I have always been drawn to those things that were new and developmental missions because that’s what I find so exciting. So I’m sure I’ll find some next new piece to work on.

Host: Well, before we close, are there any upcoming mission milestones our audience should keep an eye out for?

Jacki Mahaffey: Well, a big milestone for training will certainly be our first asset simulation. So, you know, doing the liftoff through those first dynamic minutes in flight. So the first time that we bring crew and Mission Control together to do a practice of that I think will be a really meaningful moment where we all reflect on what we’re really preparing for. And hopefully, we’ll get some photos of that and share with everyone when it happens.

Host: Well, Jackie, thank you for being a small but very large piece of this very big puzzle. Thanks so much for joining us today and thank you for all of your contributions to the Artemis II mission.

Jacki Mahaffey: Thank you.

[Music]

Host: Thanks for sticking around. Our full collection of episodes is on nasa.gov/podcasts. You can also find the many other wonderful podcasts we have across the agency. If you want more podcasts about the Artemis program, we have an ongoing series about the Gateway lunar space station. You can check out the first few episodes right now, and there’s more to come. You can learn more about the Artemis program at nasa.gov/artemis. You can also keep up with the mission on Instagram and X @NASAArtemis. On social media, we’re on the NASA Johnson Space Center, pages of Facebook, X, and Instagram. Use #AskNASA on your favorite platform to submit your idea or ask a question, just make sure to mention it’s for Houston We Have a Podcast.

This episode was recorded July 22, 2024. Thanks to Will Flato, Dane Turner, Abby Graf, Jaden Jennings, and Gary Jordan. And of course, thanks again to Jacki Mahaffey for taking the time to come on the show. Give us a rating and feedback on whatever platform you’re listening to us on and tell us what you think of our podcast. We’ll be back next week.

This is an Official NASA Podcast.