Southwestern University Alumna Kayla Comeaux ’11 is at the Center of NASA’s Mission to the Moon
Mathematics alumna Kayla Comeaux ’11 served as the Lead Flight Activity Officer for NASA’s Artemis II mission, a critical operation in the administration’s quest to return humans to the Moon.
For 10 days in April, NASA’s Artemis II mission captivated the nation and inspired the world. The second in a series of five missions that will ultimately return humankind to the Moon in 2028, Artemis II was a crewed flyby of the Moon designed to test critical equipment, systems, and procedures ahead of lunar exploration in future Artemis operations.
Astronauts Reid Weisman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen became celebrities overnight, making history by becoming the first humans to leave low Earth orbit since NASA’s final Apollo mission in 1972, and by going the farthest distance any human has traveled from Earth. During their 10 days in space, the crew was tasked with completing dozens of objectives at various stages of the mission, an endeavor that required a detailed schedule meticulously planned down to the five minute mark.
At the center of this planning effort was Southwestern University alumna Kayla Comeaux ’11. As the Lead Flight Activity Officer for the Artemis II mission, Comeaux was responsible for creating the entire mission timeline, from the days leading up to the breathtaking launch of Artemis II’s Space Launch System in Florida, to the journey around the Moon, and finally through the dramatic splashdown and recovery of the Orion spacecraft off the coast of California.
Photo courtesy Kayla Comeaux. “It was an amazing experience,” Comeaux said. “It’s the first time we’re sending people back to the Moon since Apollo. Being able to plan that and have a hand in the success of the mission, plus working with such a fabulous team, was fantastic.”
As her colleagues flew to the Moon and back, about 250,000 miles away at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Comeaux and her team worked within the spacecraft’s trajectory information and daily crew constraints to fit in as many mission objectives as possible.
“As planners, prior to and throughout the mission, we constantly work and rework the plan to allow as many mission objectives and test objectives to be accomplished while ensuring all constraints are met,” Comeaux said. “With such a short duration mission and many mission and test objectives, how do we do this? We work with the flight control team to find the optimal solution.”
As the astronauts worked to adhere to the schedule Comeaux and her team developed, their activities were broadcast to the world in real time. Much like the Apollo missions to the Moon in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Artemis II mission was broadcast live on television and radio across the globe. However, unlike the Apollo missions, Artemis was also live-streamed online, accessible to watch by anyone with an internet connection. NASA recently estimated that 149.4 million people watched live at some point. As excitement swelled around the history-making enterprise, Comeaux and her team could feel the support from across the country and around the globe.
“We were able to really pick up on that vibe, from not only the U.S. but from around the world,” she said. “We had a Canadian astronaut on board and we used the ESA [European Space Agency] service module, so this was definitely an international effort to get people back to the Moon.”
In addition to ESA, the Canadian Space Agency, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, and the United Arab Emirates’ Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre are all involved in the Artemis goal of returning humans to the Moon. For Comeaux, these partnerships have allowed her to collaborate with some of the brightest minds on Earth.
Photo Credit: NASA/Michael DeMocker. “It’s a wonderful experience,” she said. “It’s gathering the best minds and the best creative ideas that we can to solve really difficult problems. It’s working with different cultures and people from different backgrounds, and that really opens the door of possibilities in terms of what we can accomplish.”
Even before the Artemis II mission completed, NASA had their sights set on Artemis III, a demonstration mission in low Earth orbit that will test one or both commercially-manufactured lunar landers from SpaceX and Blue Origin, scheduled for 2027. While her exact plans haven’t materialized yet, Comeaux anticipates being involved in either the ascent or re-entry portion of the mission.
Looking ahead to 2028, Artemis IV is scheduled to feature the first lunar landing, one in which the space flight crew will transfer from NASA’s Orion spacecraft to a commercial lunar lander for their descent to the Moon’s surface. Comeaux is slated to take part in Artemis V, a late 2028 mission to the lunar surface designed to pave the way for subsequent annual missions to the Moon.
Perhaps it comes as no surprise that Comeaux is heavily involved in NASA’s most ambitious project in two generations. Her grandfather, Owen “Glenn” Morris, served as a Project Manager at NASA, where he worked on Apollo’s Lunar Excursion Module before overseeing the agency’s transition from the Apollo spacecraft to the Space Shuttle in the 1970s.
“He was always very open. He never pushed us one way or another in terms of our interests or fields of study,” Comeaux said. “But he was always there to help us. He would take us to launch toy rockets, fly remote control airplanes, and build model airplanes. He was very passionate about us following our dreams.”
A pair of dreams led Comeaux to Southwestern from her hometown of Friendswood, a suburb of Houston not far from the Johnson Space Center: 1) to someday work at NASA, and 2) to play collegiate soccer at a university that prioritizes academics over athletics. It didn’t take her long to achieve the latter. Comeaux laced up her cleats for the Pirates each of her four years at Southwestern, earning a spot on both the 2009 and 2010 Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference Student-Athlete Academic Honor Roll. While it was soccer that first introduced Comeaux to SU, she ultimately became a multi-sport athlete, also competing in lacrosse.
“[Being a student-athlete] was a critical part of being at Southwestern University,” she said. “It really developed a lot of friendships and built that teamwork aspect that I now use every single day.”
Off the field, Comeaux excelled in the classroom, majoring in mathematics while adding minors in both physics and economics and graduating Magna Cum Laude and being inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa Society. She credits the multifaceted education that she received at Southwestern for her professional success at NASA.
“The unique thing about the role that I’m in now and have been in for the last 12 years is that it’s a lot about collaboration and teamwork and thinking outside the box,” she said. “I think the coursework and the material that we have at Southwestern really yields to well-rounded individuals and the ability to work in teams and collaborate and get the best solution possible.”
During her junior year at Southwestern in 2009, Comeaux became one of just 100 students in the country to earn a NASA MUST Scholarship. Short for Motivating Undergraduates in Science and Technology, the MUST program offers multi-year scholarships to students majoring in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The opportunity allowed her access to tutoring, lectures, and mentoring from NASA faculty and peers.
“I really just fell in love with the job. I loved the people. I loved the environment,” Comeaux said. “It’s a very collaborative team effort in flight operations. I knew that’s where I wanted to be. I knew it was hard to get in, but it was my dream job.”
During her time as a NASA MUST Scholar, Comeaux learned of another opportunity at NASA for graduate students that included an internship at Johnson Space Center. Eager to participate, she enrolled in Texas Tech University’s graduate mathematics program after completing her undergraduate journey at Southwestern.
At Texas Tech, Comeaux earned a master’s degree in mathematics with a focus in mathematical biology, where she analyzed the coupling of the within-host and between-host systems through the environment using deterministic and stochastic approaches. She also earned a spot in the coveted internship program at the Johnson Space Center, an opportunity that culminated with a full-time job offer as an Aerospace Technologist.
“I started off doing long-range planning for the International Space Station,” she said. “I was essentially helping plan a week ahead for the crew on the International Space Station. Once I graduated from that position in Mission Control, I went to work in the back room.”
NASA’s Mission Control in Houston is organized into two “rooms.” The front room, or the FCR (Flight Control Room), is the primary operations center where flight directors and key controllers make real-time, mission-critical decisions. The back rooms, also called the MPSR (Multi Purpose Support Room), consist of specialized support areas filled with experts who perform troubleshooting, data analysis, and modeling to assist the front room.
Photo Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett. When Comeaux isn’t lending her talents to the Artemis missions, her primary focus is on the International Space Station (ISS). After beginning her NASA career in long-range planning for the massive laboratory orbiting the Earth, Comeaux was promoted to conduct short-range planning in the back room. From there, she earned another promotion, this time to help coordinate real-time ISS planning in the front room.
Since its launch in 1998, NASA has organized activities onboard the International Space Station into six-month increments, numbered sequentially. Comeaux served as the Lead Ops Planner for ISS Increments 64 and 69. Similar to her role during Artemis II but on a much longer timeline, she was responsible for planning out six months of routine operations and science onboard the ISS, down to five-minute intervals.
During her time leading planning for Increment 64 in 2020, Comeaux was involved in the docking of the first-ever SpaceX Dragon spacecraft at the ISS. Increment 69 made history in 2023 with the first long-duration crew member from the United Arab Emirates joining the ISS.
When she isn’t making history in the control room, Comeaux likes to dedicate her time to giving back. She serves as a volunteer firefighter and emergency medical technician (EMT) for her hometown Friendswood Fire Department, an opportunity that she was connected to through her brother, who serves as a captain for the department. She also is a member of the Texas Task Force, which supports recovery efforts both within Texas and around the greater United States. Supporting as a Technical Informational Specialist, Comeaux combines her planning background from NASA with her first responder background in the fire service.
Photo courtesy Kayla Comeaux.
Photo courtesy Kayla Comeaux.
Photo Credit: Michael Faber Photography.
Photo courtesy Kayla Comeaux.
She also gives back to her alma mater, continuing a strong bond with the institution that set her on a path to her dream job. In recent years, Comeaux has planned site visits at NASA for Southwestern students, shared internship and job postings with SU’s Center for Career and Professional Development, and spoken to various student groups on campus. She tries to return to Georgetown at least once a year, helping create paths for the next generation of dreamers and explorers destined to take NASA to the Moon and beyond.
“I know there aren’t a whole lot of Southwestern University alumni at NASA, but I was able to find a path, and I want to help the next person,” she said. “I want to help them be successful, help them with their career path, and maybe knock down a couple of barriers that may make it a little bit easier for them to accomplish their goal.”
Southwestern University published this content on July 22, 2026, and is solely responsible for the information contained herein. Distributed via Public Technologies (PUBT), unedited and unaltered, on July 22, 2026 at 21:35 UTC. If you believe the information included in the content is inaccurate or outdated and requires editing or removal, please contact us at [email protected]
