NASA's Oct. 16 profile follows Allison Mjoen's 20-year career at Kennedy from shuttle and space station work to Artemis vehicle operations for crewed lunar missions.
NASA identifies Mjoen as its Exploration Ground Systems spacecraft offline operations manager. She watched Artemis II lift off with her children on April 1, 2026, the agency said.
Her responsibilities include developing integration plans for Artemis vehicle processing and overseeing ground work involving booster and Orion spacecraft operations. She supports senior vehicle operations manager Matt Czech, according to NASA.
Based at Kennedy, NASA's Exploration Ground Systems program runs the facilities and systems used to prepare Artemis rockets and spacecraft, conduct launches and recover vehicles. That work includes activity before launch and recovery after missions return to Earth.
At United Space Alliance, Mjoen served as a flight crew systems engineer during the Space Shuttle Program. Her team planned cabin configurations for each mission, handling details that included food, spacesuits, cargo and payloads, NASA's profile says.
She later became an International Space Station payload integration engineer. For Artemis I, she led the Spacecraft Payloads Integration and Evolution Element. NASA also says she served as a certified operations project engineer and supported integrated firing-room operations during that mission.
NASA records show the Space Launch System lifted off from Kennedy's Launch Pad 39B at 6:35 p.m. ET (22:35 UTC) on April 1, 2026, with four astronauts aboard Orion. Artemis II completed a crewed lunar flyby and splashed down April 10. Its flight lasted nine days, one hour and 32 minutes. The mission did not include a lunar landing; NASA describes it as a step toward future lunar-surface missions.
NASA's profile also points to the first Apollo Moon landing as a historical comparison for Artemis. Mjoen summed up her approach as “staying curious, working hard, building relationships.” She also said “our collective efforts directly contribute to the success of the mission.”
