NASA profiled Katie Spicer as the lander integration lead for Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mark 2 lander on Nov. 12, 2026. The profile places a Johnson Space Center civil servant at the center of how the agency splits integration work with a commercial hardware provider ahead of crewed Artemis landings.
In this role, Spicer will have her handprint on history, NASA says, framing her work as part of the agency’s return to the Moon. Blue Moon Mark 2 is one of the commercially provided human landing systems for NASA’s Artemis program. The division of integration work sits between a NASA civil servant and the commercial hardware provider ahead of crewed Artemis landings.
Spicer serves as the NASA side of that division for Blue Moon Mark 2 while the company develops its lander hardware. She works in the Flight Operations Directorate (the center’s mission-operations division) at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, where she evaluates and monitors the design and development of Blue Origin’s lander. She works closely with her NASA and Blue Origin counterparts to support Artemis mission objectives. NASA states that she evaluates and monitors the rapidly evolving Blue Moon lander design as the lander integration lead at Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Blue Origin is developing a streamlined lander test article for NASA’s Artemis III rendezvous and docking mission in low Earth orbit (the region of space close to Earth). The company is also developing a fully functional lander for a crewed lunar landing in 2028. This crewed landing vehicle is part of the same rapidly evolving Blue Moon lander design that Spicer evaluates and monitors for NASA’s Artemis program, and both vehicles remain in development as the design continues to change.
Spicer said she reviews the design of each system Artemis crews will handle and use to confirm it works the way astronauts need it to. She evaluates whether crew can grab handles or handrails, operate push-button displays in microgravity, use user-friendly hygiene systems in limited space, and follow proper procedures and training for safe and effective system use. In some cases, a design might meet requirements, but she examines details more closely from a crew perspective.
“Unlike most people I work with, I don’t have an engineering degree,” Spicer said. She explained that she studied engineering principles on her own, passed boards and certification tests, and learned to speak “engineer.”
Spicer earned a bachelor’s degree in microbiology from the Pennsylvania State University in State College before spending years as a full-time homemaker raising three children. She got her start at NASA working part-time in the historic Life Sciences Laboratory, washing dishes, cleaning lab equipment, and running tests for scientists. The profile notes Apollo crews quarantined at this lab after returning from the Moon and the lab stored Moon rock samples.
In the International Space Station National Laboratory, she ran the Human Research Facility racks and coordinated with scientists and crew to complete in-flight processes and protocols. She became a flight controller at NASA Johnson’s Mission Control Center in 2018 after studying and training for five years to earn ultimate instructor and flight controller certifications. The profile describes the learning curve as steep but says it did not deter her.
For five years she served as an Operations and Support Officer in Mission Control’s space station flight control room, an area spaceflight teams call the “front room.” The profile places this role after her flight controller training and before her current position as lander integration lead.
Spicer said she feels humbled and honored to be part of the team sending astronauts back to the lunar surface when she looks at the Moon in the night sky. She added that she remains mindful of NASA’s great responsibility, the legacy of Apollo crews, and inspiring the next generation of space explorers.
The agency said Artemis astronauts will take on progressively harder missions near the Moon’s south pole, visiting more of the lunar surface than before during what it calls a Golden Age of innovation and exploration. The profile says these missions will also provide economic benefits and advance scientific discovery through Moon missions. The agency will establish an enduring human presence on the lunar surface and build on its foundation for the first crewed mission to Mars while providing economic benefits and advancing scientific discovery through its Moon missions.
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