BOONE COUNTY, Ky. — A Boone County High School graduate played an important role in NASA’s successful Artemis II mission.
Dr. Taylor Schlotman, who graduated from Boone County High School in 2009, served as a human performance engineer at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Her alma mater celebrated her contributions in a Facebook post.
"From Boone County High School to the forefront of human spaceflight, we are proud to call her a BCHS graduate — proof that hard work, passion and perseverance can take you anywhere," the school wrote. "The sky truly is the limit."
The post also shared photos showing Schlotman greeting the Artemis II crew after they returned to Earth. The photos show Schlotman on a tarmac, shaking hands with Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen and embracing Pilot Victor Glover.
According to NASA, a human performance engineer researches and applies knowledge of human capabilities, limitations and behaviors to optimize astronauts’ health, safety and productivity. This work includes helping to design and test technologies for use by astronauts in aerospace environments.
Artemis II marks NASA’s inaugural crewed mission within the ‘Artemis’ initiative, which aims to send humans back to the Moon. The flight was the first human lunar mission since 1972, in addition to being the furthest distance humans have ever traveled from Earth.
NASA’s Orion Spacecraft blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on April 1, sending four astronauts—Americans Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch and Canadian Jeremy Hansen—on a mission during which they successfully flew around the Moon and back. The crew safely completed the mission on April 10, when the Orion splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California.
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