The Moon & Beyond: St. Louis Astronomical Society March Meeting

“The Moon and Beyond” an illustrated live virtual presentation by Tom Rathjen of The Aerospace Corporation, will be featured at the March meeting of the Saint Louis Astronomical Society.

Mr. Rathjen will present an overview of NASA’s “Artemis Program”, which will return humans to the moon by the end of this decade. What space vehicles are being developed? What is their technical status? What is the schedule? How will Artemis be different from Apollo Lunar Landing Missions? His presentation will include descriptions of the Orion crewed spacecraft, the Space Launch System rocket, the “Lunar Gateway” station, and Human Landing Systems.

Thomas Rathjen has worked in human space flight for over 36 years. He was a senior executive at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC, and an engineer at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Since retiring in 2018, he currently provides human space flight consulting through The Aerospace Corporation. His many roles at NASA included directing programmatic integration for what is now the Artemis Program, as well as working on NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. He also worked with NASA life sciences and space medicine endeavors, Space Shuttle flight crew equipment design, and space human factors research and development. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Engineering and Applied Sciences from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and a master’s degree in Human Factors Engineering from Wright State University. Besides the science projects, Tom also plays lead guitar in several Indianapolis classic rock bands.

The event, cosponsored by NASA's Missouri Space Grant Consortium, is open to the public free of charge. The St. Louis Astronomical Society is an organization for individuals interested in astronomy and telescopes. For more information about Astronomical Society events, please visit www.slasonline.org.

Free parking will be available.