Lipscomb alum Hayden Sears ‘cherishes’ experience supporting historic Artemis II mission

Lipscomb alum Hayden Sears 'cherishes' experience supporting historic Artemis II mission

From Orion communications work to future Space Launch System testing, the engineering graduate has built a career helping support NASA's return to the Moon.

Kim Chaudoin | 04/06/2026

As the world watches NASA's Artemis II mission carry astronauts around the Moon for the first crewed lunar flyby in more than 50 years, Lipscomb University alumnus Hayden Sears is following the journey with a unique perspective. The 2017 mechanical engineering graduate spent part of his career in aerospace working on Orion, the spacecraft now carrying four astronauts on a historic 10-day mission launched April 1 from Kennedy Space Center.

Artemis II is NASA's first mission with crew aboard both the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft. The mission is a major step in NASA's broader Artemis program, which is intended to lay the groundwork for future lunar surface missions and, eventually, missions to Mars.

For Sears, the moment is both exciting and humbling.

"It feels presumptuous to assume that I had any hand at all in this mission, but I suppose I did play the tiniest of parts for just a little bit," said Sears, who also graduated from Lipscomb Academy in 2013. "I can't believe that I got to be a small part of it, but I will always cherish that experience and be thankful that I did."

"It's also incredible to think about the hundreds of people I came into contact with working toward this mission, and the thousands of others around both the country and world that I know put forth effort into making Artemis fly," he continued. "From people who created tiny microchips that create the onboard computers, to those who assembled the rocket engines and fuel tanks, to those who ensure the life support systems are designed to keep the crew not only safe but also as comfortable as possible, to the people who spend all day just thinking up what little things could go wrong with the vehicle and how we will respond to those errors, culminating in the astronauts themselves, who I have always felt represent the absolute best of humanity. Missions like this simply do not happen without intense and purposeful collaboration across a diverse spectrum of skills, knowledge, experience, backgrounds and roles."

Sears' path into aerospace began soon after graduation, when he moved to Huntsville, Alabama, to begin work in the field. Over four years there, he worked for Lockheed Martin on several space-related programs, including NextSTEP, which developed designs for space stations in lunar orbit. He later moved with his wife to Denver, where he spent two years working on the Orion program before returning to Nashville in 2023. He now works for Cepeda Systems & Software Analysis, a contractor that provides engineering and technology service employees to NASA and other government agencies." A large portion of NASA employees are contractors like I am - technically employed by another company, but in day to day operations we are all NASA employees. He is contracted out to NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in Huntsville. Along the way, he also earned a Master of Engineering Management from Ohio University.

Throughout his engineering career, Sears has worked as a systems engineer, a role he describes as wide-ranging by design. His work has required him to understand specialized disciplines across engineering and help bring them together in service of a single mission.

"The roles I have had entailed understanding specific and focused roles of engineering, things like software coding, thermal testing, hardware fabrication, flight trajectory calculation and much more and being the glue between these narrow focuses to ensure they come together and successfully complete the mission," said Sears. "It requires a working knowledge of nearly every aspect of the program with a focus toward the end goal."

That systems perspective proved especially important during his work on Orion, much of which supported the Artemis II mission. Orion is the crew vehicle that the astronauts are riding in on the entire 10-day mission. In future missions, Sears said Orion will dock with a lunar lander that the astronauts will transfer to in order to travel down to the Moon's surface.

Sears worked on the vehicle's communications subsystem, helping ensure reliable communication between Orion and NASA Mission Control at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. He said the Orion vehicle is almost entirely automated during its mission and has thousands of commands and controls programmed into its software ahead of launch that it will carry out in a detailed schedule over the course of its mission, including automated sequences he helped develop that the spacecraft will carry out.

"I helped to create some of these automated sequences that the vehicle will carry out, and worked with a team of people to make sure every aspect of the mission was well orchestrated to ensure astronaut safety and mission success," he said.

Now, even as Artemis II continues its mission, Sears is helping prepare for what comes next. In his current role at Cepeda, he works as a contractor at NASA MSFC in a test lab focused on the Space Launch System rocket for future Artemis missions. This is the 322-foot-tall rocket that launches Orion and sets it on its course toward the Moon.

"My job is another systems engineering role where I work to make sure the rocket is adequately tested and prepared for future missions that will have different requirements and capabilities depending on mission goals," he said. "I work with a great team of other systems engineers, test engineers and software engineers to make sure SLS is ready to be assembled at MSFC and handed down to Kennedy Space Center in Florida when the time is right."

Sears said his days in Lipscomb's Raymond B. Jones College of Engineering provided him the mindset he needed to thrive in such a demanding field. While he said some equations may fade with time, the habits of critical thinking, problem-solving and persistence have stayed with him.

"Lipscomb engineering did a great job of preparing me to go out into the world and apply the knowledge and skills they had given me on real applications," Sears said. "I was certainly prepared to think critically and be a problem solver and show that I am always willing to learn and find the right answers to tough problems."

He expressed deep gratitude for Lipscomb engineering faculty members who invested in him, including Fort Gwinn, Kerry Patterson, Richard Gregory, Kirsten Dodson, Stephanie Weeden-Wright, Joseph Tipton and Fred Gilliam.

"I'm so thankful for everyone in the engineering department and everyone else at Lipscomb that taught, cared for and loved me over my many years there," said Sears. "I'm a better person because of the many people who have loved me over the years of my life, and I can do nothing but be very grateful."

He also credits fellow Lipscomb alumnus and mechanical engineering major Adam Barney ('06) with helping open the door to a career in aerospace. One day while Sears was a student at Lipscomb, Barney was a guest speaker in his Introduction to Aerospace class.

"During this class is when I truly found aerospace both fascinating and realistically possible for someone like me, and hearing about his career inspired me to reach out to him and ask about his journey," recalled Sears. "He took me under his wing and gave me tons of advice and really helped me get into my first role at Lockheed Martin. I am not sure it would have been possible without his support and guidance then and for the first few years of my career in Huntsville."

For Sears, the significance of Artemis II extends far beyond engineering milestones. He sees it as a reminder of what exploration can still mean in today's world.

"All of aerospace, I believe, is one of the most fascinating fields of human study," he said. "It is in our nature, at the core of our being, to explore. There is a whole host of reasons why NASA and other scientific research is important but I also believe that NASA is one of the last few areas where we can celebrate exploration just for the sake of exploration."

"We live in a world of war, division, inequality and selfishness. But on days like April 1, 2026, we can watch the world come together for just a moment and celebrate a rocket launch sending four brave souls on a trip around the Moon," he continued. "Together we can marvel at the images and video they will send us back. We can look at the pictures of the blue marble planet we call Earth and recognize that every one of us lives here together. Looking at those pictures we won't see borders, we won't see governments, we won't see what makes us different. We just see our home that we share together. I think space exploration is a world of collaboration that gives us a glimpse of how beautiful our reality can be if we try."

Learn more about the Raymond B. Jones College of Engineering's mechanical engineering program.