Chicagoan helps launch Artemis II, NASA's first moon mission in 53 years

Amy Lendian, a Chicago resident, remembered watching Apollo 8 lift off in 1968 as she shook off nerves heading to work on Wednesday morning.

She was set to enter the control room at the Kennedy Space Center for what could have been a 16-hour shift. Her mind was on the mission from 58 years ago, which helped turn her dreams toward the stars./

Now 67, and the acting systems engineer manager for the Artemis II lunar orbital mission and former fire suppression and console engineer for the Artemis I rocket, she was thinking back on that 9-year-old girl who watched "almost the same" mission she would play a part in Wednesday.

“As a kid I wanted to be an astronaut,” Lendian said. “ So for me this has a very special meaning.”

Lendian was called out of retirement to helm a team of four engineers in the control room monitoring systems that range from water and electrical to fire suppression in case of an emergency — a much larger task with an actual crew onboard. Artemis I was unmanned.

Artemis II is the opening shot of NASA’s grand plans for a permanent moon base. Three Americans and one Canadian are set to fly around the moon without stopping or even orbiting — then head straight back for a Pacific splashdown. They will set a new distance record for the farthest humans have traveled from Earth as they zoom some 4,000 miles (6,400 kilometers) beyond the moon and then hang a U-turn.

The rocket, destined for the moon, took off shortly after 5:30 p.m. without issue, starting the astronauts' 10-day journey — the farthest any humans have traveled from Earth.

NASA had not lanched a moon mission since Apollo 17 in 1972. The space program is aiming to land near the lunar south pole in 2028.

Michelle Nichols, the Adler Planetarium's senior director of public programs, worked at the Kennedy Space Center's space camp in the early 90s and has witnessed launches firsthand. She was always in awe of the low rumble that resonates in everyone's chest as the rocket lifts off, she said, but that the gravity of the watching the current mission was historic.

"Most of the people on this planet weren't alive the last time humanity was in the vicinity of the moon," Nichols, who herself was two months old in 1972 when Apollo 17 orbited the moon. "It's difficult to quantify the excitement."

Dozens of people gathered in the planetarium's cafe, counting down with Nichols before erupting into cheers, and some tears, as the rocket lifted off into the sky.

Among those watching the launch at the Adler was Viviene Ebel of Ottawa, Illinois, and her 5-year-old brother, Adler. Like Lendian years ago, Viviene dreams of working at NASA.

Wednesday was Viviene's second rocket launch; she and her family watched a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch in December. That inspired her to do a science project for her class about Artemis.

Viviene also hopes to one day walk on her favorite planet — Mars. She's interested in that planet because it may have been habitable, once upon a time.

"I just hope I get there," Ebel said.

With the rocket firing toward the moon, Lendian said her day would end with beans and cornbread, a longtime NASA tradition.

But she knows the impact of a delayed launch all too well, as Artemis I delays also delayed her wedding by several months. Lendian and her wife — Anne Barela, a former NASA engineer herself who worked on the agency’s social team during the Artemis I launch — ultimately tied the knot at the space center, taking their pictures in the Rocket Garden.

“We couldn’t plan anything because we weren’t sure when the rocket would fire,” Lendian said. So when they had the chance, after another delay, they had to hurry. "I called up Anne and said ‘Let’s put together a wedding,’ and we did it in six weeks. ... It was wonderful."

Lendian had been a fire suppression systems engineer who landed at Florida's Kennedy Space Center in 2020. But last year, she and Barela, both trans women, moved to Chicago amid a rash of anti-trans laws that made them feel unsafe.

With the launch taking place the same week as Transgender Day of Visibility, she said it was “a big deal.”

“All my trans siblings can do whatever they want to and be a part of something important like this," Lendian said.

Contributing: AP