As Moon Landing Nears 50th Anniversary, NASA Plans To Go Back

Jul. 15--Janet Kavandi remembers exactly where she was on July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took those first historic steps on the surface of the moon:

In bed.

It was her grandmother's fault.

"I remember being at my grandmother's house and watching everything on TV," Kavandi said. "It was evening, and my grandmother said, 'Well, time for bed.' And I said, 'But they are about to walk on the moon! Surely I can stay up past bedtime for that?' ... I had to miss the first steps on the moon because it was past my bedtime."

Even as a 10-year-old, Kavandi understood the significance of the Apollo 11 moon landing 50 years ago this Saturday.

Eventually, she followed Armstrong and Aldrin into space and is now playing a role in getting humans back to the moon.

A 1977 graduate of Carthage High School, she pursued her bachelor's degree from Missouri Southern State University and then her master's degree from the Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla before working for Eagle-Picher in Joplin, assisting in new battery development for defense applications.

She would go on to get a doctorate in analytical chemistry from the University of Washington-Seattle and work as an engineer at Boeing Aerospace Group.

In 1994, she was selected as a member of the 15th class of U.S. astronauts. Across three missions between 1998 and 2001, she logged more than 33 days in space.

At NASA, she served as a mission specialist astronaut on STS-91, the final shuttle/Mir partnership mission. Her second mission was aboard STS-99, which mapped more than 47 million miles of Earth's land surface to provide data for a three-dimensional topographical map. In 2001, she served aboard STS-104, whose mission was to add the airlock to the International Space Station.

In April, Kavandi, 59, was inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame.

While on the ground, she never bothered to tell Armstrong or Aldrin about her grandmother forcing her to sleep through their historic landing on the moon, she said, joking.

Now, as director of NASA's John H. Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, she leads its focuses on technology, research and systems development supporting propulsion, power and communications in space, as well as material development.

Like the rest of NASA, Kavandi is focused on a return to the moon.

Named Project Artemis (after the twin sister of Apollo) the effort includes goals of landing on the moon's south pole -- a part of the moon where no human has ever been -- and taking the first steps toward a sustainable presence on the moon.

Among the goals of Project Artemis is creating the foundation for private companies to build a lunar economy. But unlike the Apollo 11 missions, which were motivated by a race with other countries, Kavandi said the ultimate goal of Artemis is simply human survival.

"We're actually trying to sustain humans off the planet Earth and learn how to live in a location that's hostile," Kavandi said. "If we can learn to make food and water and habitats that protect us, we can take all that information and put it toward an even further destination, Mars."

To fund the operation, President Donald Trump in May announced he would ask for an additional $1.6 billion to help put humans on the moon by 2024. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine told reporters in May that the allocation would be a "down payment" on the mission.

Kavandi said that all the work and investment into a mission for getting people to the moon will offer many benefits to people still on Earth. Many technological advances, including aerospace industries, medicine, global positioning systems and even simple cellphone calls, were a result of space exploration.

"When you think back to the Apollo time frame ... we did employ a lot of people," Kavandi said. "All of these things evolved over time as a result of those initial efforts for space exploration, and we shouldn't take it for granted."

On our website

Listen to much more from Carthage astronaut Janet Kavandi, now the director of NASA's John H. Glenn Research Center, in Sunday's episode of "In Case You Missed It," available at joplinglobe.com. Kavandi talked more about how the Apollo 11 moon landing influenced her, the goals of Project Artemis and how people excited about the prospect of returning to the moon can show their support.

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