As the Artemis II spacecraft Orion made its way safely around the moon and back down to Earth, Jared Peick ’13 took it all in from a unique vantage point — from behind a console in the back room of Mission Control.
“It was 10 days, but it felt like a month,” Peick said of the 10-day NASA mission in April that returned astronauts to the moon for the first time in more than 50 years. “I was living and breathing this thing. Even when I was off console, I was listening to the communication loops from home because I didn’t want to miss being a part of it.”
Jared Peick ’13 stands in front of an Artemis space craft during an earlier mission. (Courtesy of Jared Peick)
Peick’s role as a biomedical engineer on Artemis II is the culmination of a dream that landed him in Houston in 2020 to work on the project to return humans to the lunar surface in 2028 with Artemis IV.
His dream began in Penacook, New Hampshire, where he grew up 15 minutes from the Christa McAuliffe Planetarium (later renamed the McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center).
“I had this fascination with this idea that we could send people out into the universe and put them on the moon,” he said. “How does one achieve that? And how does one get to be on the team that does that?”
Peick said that question inspired him to enter a planetarium essay contest when he was in middle school, which “was good enough to get a trip to space camp” in Huntsville, Alabama. That’s where he got to pretend to be a mission controller and an astronaut, and experience a bit of what it meant to participate in human spaceflight, Peick said.
“I was pretty much sold from there,” he said.
Jared Peick ’13 poses with the biomedical engineering team he worked with on Artemis II. (Photo courtesy of Jared Peick)
When Peick arrived at St. Mike’s in 2009, though, he started in the Journalism and Mass Communications program. But his fascination with the greater universe wasn’t far from his mind.
“The science bug kind of bit me again, and I started thinking about space,” he said. Peick soon changed his major to Biology.
Space, he said, was always in the back of his head, saying: “Hey, don’t forget about me. I’m the thing you love most, so go and try to pursue this somehow.”
Peick told Biology Professor Declan McCabe he wanted to study astrobiology.
“He was the first student who ever told me or even, I suspect, knew what astrobiology was,” McCabe said. “And he’s getting as close to it as anyone possibly could working for NASA.”
Diving into undergraduate research
Peick spent the summer between his junior and senior years at St. Mike’s working with McCabe and a small group of students trying to understand the health of the tributaries to Lake Champlain by examining the macroinvertebrates — in other words, studying the bugs living in those streams.
Peick credits that experience with giving him the confidence and knowledge that helped him get his foot in the door at NASA. That summer project helped Peick both land his first job and later, during graduate school, a research internship at the Kennedy Space Center on sustainable food sources for long-duration spaceflights.
“The researcher wanted to talk about invertebrates like shellfish, and I said, well, I don’t have shellfish experience, but I’ve got some aquatic bug experience,” Peick said.
Jared Peick ’13, right, works with two other students on a research project in summer 2012.
McCabe continues to encourage students to take advantage of research opportunities “whether it relates to their long-term goals or not.”
“In reality, if their long-term goals involve science, whatever the research is, it relates. The scientific approach is the scientific method,” McCabe said. “Whether you’re studying cats or … something else — it’s going to be relevant. The approach is consistent across the disciplines.”
That summer taught Peick something else, another lesson he learned from McCabe — that it’s OK not to know something. The critical thing, McCabe had said to him, is how are you going to go about asking the questions to get closer to an answer, and learn along the way, “but don’t be afraid going forward in a direction that has some uncertainty to it because sometimes that’s where you find just a place that you didn’t think you would be.”
Peick said he still thinks about that perspective for both his life and his work.
Science as a ‘team sport’
The biomedical engineering team (call sign “BME”) for Artemis is involved in both the design and development of the medical system and its operation, as flight controllers on the console. Two BMEs — one in the front room, one in the back room — are on 24/7 monitoring and managing multiple responsibilities during the mission.
“Flight control is … the biggest team sport that there is,” Peick said. “It’s a lot of reliance on other people’s expertise because they’re relying on you for your expertise and your discipline.”
Peick had six shifts during the 10-day mission: four during the crew’s awake period and two when they were asleep. When the crew is asleep, BMEs review the next day’s timeline and plan. Peick said the most exciting part of the work is when the crew is awake because that’s when they’re doing the activities the team has spent years developing for them.
Jared Peick ’13 sits at the console in the back room of NASA Mission Control during the Artemis II mission in April 2026. (Photo courtesy of Jared Peick)
That included checking out the medical system — the many different things designed to ensure the crew remains healthy throughout the mission.
“As a flight control team, we’re always thinking about keeping crew safe, then vehicle, then mission,” Peick said.
The diagnostic hardware is a medical kit based on the most probable things that could happen in a 10-day mission. And, the Flywheel, a first-of-its-kind exercise device, enabled the crew to do a wide range of cardio and resistive exercises — from rowing to dead lifts.
In addition to the functional aspect of these devices, the team also evaluates potential effects of vibrations or radiation on them, the logistics and usefulness for the crew, and what their environmental impact is (like noise levels in the cabin).
“You test on the ground to make sure that equipment can handle those vibration loads, but you never truly know until you fly,” Peick said.
This valuable information informs and reduces risk for future spaceflights, and “you end up with a workforce that knows how to think about problems in a way that doesn’t accept no is an answer.”
Jared Peick ’13 celebrates with his biomedical engineering teammates in NASA Mission Control during splashdown at the end of the Artemis II mission. (Photo courtesy of Jared Peick)
Memorable mission moments
Peick’s first shift was on flight day two when the crew did the translunar injection burn — the moment the flight control team fires up the engines and commits the Orion to head to the moon.
The flight controllers each check their area of performance and decide if it’s a go.
He said the focus is on the operations — but even still there were definite moments of: “Wow! We’re doing this.”
“Being a part of that was really special — to know that my voice is a part of that decision,” Peick said.
Peick also worked on the shift where the crew got into their Orion Crew Survival System suit — the orange suits they wore when they came back to Earth — and they pressurized them.
“That’s kind of like you’re doing a spacewalk inside the vehicle,” he described. It was intense, he said, making sure everything was going according to plan, with a lot of decision-making happening, but still “fun to be a part of those decisions.”
“The flight control work is definitely my favorite part,” he said. “I love working on the suit and the rovers, but the flight control work is my favorite.”
The human connection
Jared Peick ’13 smiles after his first of many training shifts for biomedical engineering certification in the White Flight Control Room of NASA’s Mission Control. The training is part of the lead-up to the next mission, Artemis III. (Photo courtesy of Jared Peick)
Peick’s team was also responsible for setting up private video conferencing, including family conferences, for the crew.
“You hit call, and the next thing you know the crew’s face is popping up on your screen,” he said. In the backroom, “we’re making sure there’s good audio and video connection, so you hear the briefest of the crew’s reaction to seeing their family … that was really special.”
On the lunar flyby day, Peick wasn’t on console, but he listened as the day unfolded.
“I reconnected with my childhood self, with why I want to do this,” he said. “Hearing the joy from crew voices, hearing the impact that it had on them, hearing their breath get taken away by something? That’s not something a robot can tell you from around the moon.”
Weeks after the mission, Peick said he was still processing the entire experience.
“We do have a lot of issues to solve on Earth,” he said, but he’s seen that you can fix things when you all work together.
“One of the crew members said it’s a miracle that we’re up here, and when I’ve seen just how much work it takes to make one of these things happen, it feels like that, too,” Peick said. “But that same thing can be applied to any challenge we have on Earth, whether it’s environmental, social — all the things that I know St. Mike’s also cares deeply about from a perspective of social justice.”
Peick was in the front room for splashdown. The flight director invited anyone who had worked a console shift to be there as the crew members were pulled out of the spacecraft. At that point, their responsibility as the Houston flight control team had ended, as the Navy Rescue Dive Team took over.
“The eruption of applause and cheering was really awesome as each crew member got pulled out, knowing that they were safe,” Peick said. “It was a pinch-me sort of moment — I’m not only in this room, but I’m in this room as a participant in it. I’m not an observer to it. I got to make decisions that impacted the successful mission, and to me, that was an incredible feeling to share the success of the team.”
Peick is already looking ahead to Artemis III mission, set to launch in 2027, and the lunar landing with Artemis IV in 2028.
“To bring it full circle, it’s like thinking about the words from some of my professors — Declan — there’s an uncertainty here,” Peick said. “You may not know all the answers, but it’s OK to go see where it takes me. So, if for some reason I can’t achieve that, then I don’t have to live with the regret of not knowing what would happen if I tried.”
For all press inquiries contact Elizabeth Murray, Associate Director of Communications at Ů.
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