As NASA’s Artemis II mission marks a historic return to crewed lunar flight, a Rice University alumna is helping monitor the spacecraft in real time from the ground.
Quyen Tran Jones, who earned her bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Rice in 1993, is part of the team working inside NASA’s mission control complex built to host the Orion Mission Evaluation Room. This critical hub at Johnson Space Center in Houston supports the agency’s first crewed lunar mission in more than 50 years.
From her console, Jones helps track the forces acting on the Orion spacecraft during flight — everything from air pressure to rocket thrust — ensuring the vehicle performs as expected in the harsh environment of space.
“We saw a really good launch, everything went according to plan,” Jones said in a NASA interview posted on Johnson Space Center’s Instagram account. “We have to check the solar arrays — that when they deploy they don’t go under any unexpected loading — and they didn’t. They deployed beautifully.”
Her team is also monitoring the spacecraft’s configuration and orientation as it executes key maneuvers. “We track that to make sure that nothing funny is happening,” she said.
Inside the Mission Evaluation Room, dozens of engineers analyze real-time data from Orion, working in close coordination with flight controllers in mission control’s White Flight Control Room, who operate and send commands to the spacecraft. The evaluation room provides critical engineering insight, helping assess performance and responding quickly to any unexpected behavior.
Jones’ work focuses on mechanisms’ thermal protection systems and loads and dynamics — disciplines essential to ensuring the spacecraft can withstand the intense forces encountered during launch, deep space travel and reentry.
“Once we get the in-flight data and can compare and confirm what some of our assumptions were that were based on testing and textbooks, and confirm that in space, I’m excited for that,” she said. “And I’m excited to see humans go around the moon.”
Jones’ path to NASA began at Rice, where she was a leader on campus, serving as president of the university’s chapter of the Society of Women Engineers and as an O-Week coordinator at Will Rice College.
Today, that foundation is reflected in her role on one of NASA’s most ambitious missions — part of a broader effort to return humans to the moon and lay the groundwork for future exploration of Mars.
The excitement surrounding her work is also resonating on social media with commenters praising her as “an amazing person doing amazing things” and celebrating Artemis II as a powerful example of what can be achieved when people come together toward a shared, “ambitious goal.”