- Boone County graduate Taylor Schlotman works as a NASA human performance engineer focused on astronaut safety and spacesuit testing.
- She helped welcome the Artemis II crew back to land in California after their 10-day journey around the moon.
- Schlotman is contributing to future Artemis missions aimed at returning humans to the moon and eventually reaching Mars.
As NASA’s Orion spacecraft splashed down in the choppy waters far off the San Diego coast, Dr. Taylor Schlotman anxiously awaited the four-person crew’s return to Earth after a harrowing 10-day journey around the moon.
“It’s tears of joy, tears of excitement, tears of just nervousness,” she told LINK nky. “It’s a lot of years of hard work coming together in this moment.”
Schlotman, a Boone County native, was at Halsey Field, a U.S. Navy installation on the Coronado Peninsula in San Diego, to welcome the Orion crew at the rally point after U.S. Navy rescue divers pulled the four astronauts from the ocean.
She currently works as a human performance engineer at NASA, a role focused on how the human body responds to the extreme environments of outer space. Schlotman said her career is rooted in a lifelong interest in pushing human limits, with the ultimate goal of working at NASA.
After graduating from Boone County High School in 2009, she studied biomedical engineering at the University of Tennessee and eventually earned a PhD. Upon finishing graduate school, Schlotman completed a postdoctoral role with the U.S. Army at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, where she led a human physiology research lab and collaborated with NASA. She was hired by the agency in 2020.
“I’ve always had NASA in mind,” she said. “It was always a dream and a goal of mine. Everything I was ever working on was flavored with something that could lead me here.”
Now based at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, Schlotman specializes in testing spacesuits for upcoming lunar and Martian missions. This involves replicating harsh spacewalking conditions, such as microgravity, as well as environments like the Moon or Mars. Some of her tests involve placing astronauts in pressurized spacesuits to perform tasks similar to those they would perform during a real spacewalk.
Her skill set aligned with the goals of NASA’s ambitious Artemis initiative, an organized series of missions aimed at returning humans to the Moon’s surface and establishing a permanent lunar base.
The recent Artemis II mission, which took place from April 1 to 11, was the agency’s inaugural crewed mission in the program, with Americans Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, along with Canadian Jeremy Hansen, successfully flying around the Moon and back. The flight was the first human lunar mission since 1972, in addition to being the furthest distance humans have ever traveled from Earth.
Eventually, Schlotman said, NASA’s goal is to undertake an official mission to Mars.
“A lot of what we do is looking at not just current spacesuits, but thinking about improvements to spacesuits that we could make down the line, especially as we’re going throughout the Artemis missions, we’re going to go back to the moon many times, all in preparation for getting us to Mars,” she said.
Through her work, Schlotman came to know the Artemis II crew on a personal level. This deepened the mission’s emotional impact because she was experiencing it not only as a scientist but also as someone watching her colleagues and friends undertake a potentially life-threatening mission. She described the splashdown day as one when she experienced an array of emotions, from pride to anxiety and many “hold-your-breath moments.”
“You start to know these folks more than this mythical celebrity astronaut kind of person,” she said. “You know them on a really human level, a friend level, a coworker level. Going into Artemis II, that automatically changes the emotion. It takes everything to the next level. You’re watching your friends and coworkers complete something that’s very scary.”
Schlotman credited her upbringing with instilling her with the curiosity and confidence to pursue a career at NASA. Her father, Tim Schlotman, previously served as the principal of Boone County High School. Coincidentally, Tim was Taylor’s principal while she was in high school.
Schlotman expressed her pride in the widespread support she received throughout Northern Kentucky for her contributions to the Artemis mission.
“I’m really touched about the reception back home of people reaching out, saying they’re proud of me,” she said. “I’m just one small person in this giant Artemis team, so that’s been really touching. I’ve heard from people from all phases of my life, sending me photos of their kids watching the live stream. It’s been really touching.”
NASA’s upcoming Artemis III mission is planned for mid-2027, where the agency will conduct crewed rendezvous and docking tests in Earth’s orbit. Artemis IV will occur the following year, when NASA will attempt the first American crewed lunar landing since Apollo 17 in December 1972. Schlotman expects to contribute to each of these missions, in addition to future agency endeavors.
“I’ve been at NASA for six years, working every single day on that goal — getting us back to the moon,” she said.
