CHAMPAIGN — A Rantoul Township High School reunion is bringing Ken Jacobs back into town, but he added one more thing to his agenda: a visit to Parkland College’s Staerkel Planetarium to share his firsthand account of working on NASA’s Artemis moon-exploration program.
He monitored the liquid-propellant engines on the new Space Launch System rocket to help the uncrewed Artemis I mission go smoothly and can share the scoop on upcoming plans for manned missions that might be the first steps toward visiting Mars.
“There are a lot of people that don’t know what we do at NASA any more. Everyone thinks it’s all Elon Musk and SpaceX,” Jacobs said.
One of his roles at NASA is public outreach, trying to keep people informed on what exactly the agency is working on.
“We’re trying to educate the folks on what we’re doing, motivate some of the younger generation to take advantage of opportunities — NASA is a good opportunity for folks — and instill the pride of what we do as a nation as well,” Jacobs said. “It takes an entire country to do what we’re doing.”
Jacobs took advantage of those opportunities less than a year after graduating from the University of Illinois in 1984.
He had moved in with family in Florida and learned NASA was building a workforce to continue the Space Shuttle program.
After almost 40 years, he said he could retire, but that won’t happen until the job stops being so much fun.
“You see tragedy. We’ve had a couple of incidents where we’ve lost astronauts,” he said. “But in those times, it does take a mind-set that we’re continually trying to improve and do better. It’s one of those things that I’m still motivated and excited every morning when I wake up to come to work.”
Jacobs’ family lives closer to him in Florida, so he’s rarely in Rantoul.
There are some things you can only get in East Central Illinois — Monical’s and Garcia’s pizza both make his list — but Jacobs said high school reunions are the main thing that bring him back these days.
Two years after the success of the Artemis I mission, and with a crewed launch on the horizon as early as 2025, Jacobs saw this August as a good time to show off some videos and answer questions.
He connected with the Champaign-Urbana Astronomical Society and set a presentation for 7 p.m. Thursday at the planetarium on Parkland’s campus in Champaign.
“I do have some good footage of the Artemis I launch and orbit and operations where we did send a capsule around the moon and back and re-entered,” Jacobs said. “It’s a good, pretty high-level briefing on what we’re doing and what we did for Artemis I.”