Army Vet Now Trains Astronauts for Moon Missions

Ike Theriot spent his evenings in Afghanistan tracking the International Space Station as it passed overhead, dreaming of a different future. Today, he's the NASA engineer helping astronauts prepare to take humanity's next steps on the Moon.

Theriot serves as Flight Operations Surface Testing lead at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, where he designs and runs simulated moonwalks that prepare astronauts for lunar missions. His work spans testing facilities across the U.S. and international field sites that mirror the Moon's challenging terrain.

His path to NASA started in unlikely places. While deployed in Iraq, a broken satellite transceiver sparked his curiosity about space technology. He watched technicians make repairs, then started taking online engineering courses during his downtime, studying everything from orbital mechanics to circuit design.

After leaving the Army, Theriot earned his mechanical engineering degree from the University of Houston and landed an internship at Johnson in 2016. He joined full-time in 2019, just as NASA announced the Artemis program to return humans to the Moon.

Now he does everything from diving 40 feet deep in NASA's pool to simulate spacewalks, to testing new spacesuits in systems that recreate lunar gravity. He even helped develop the Lunar Grid Reference System, a navigation tool now built into flight control systems that astronauts will use on the Moon.

Theriot recently trained alongside the Artemis II crew at Kamestastin Crater in Labrador, Canada. The 36-million-year-old impact crater offers lunar-like terrain accessible only by boat, providing realistic geology training in extreme conditions.

Why This Inspires

Theriot's proudest achievements aren't technical. He created a Field Navigation Exercise in Houston to train colleagues who had limited outdoor experience, then mentored others to become test leads themselves. "The hardest parts of our job is creating the environment to allow technical work to flourish," he explains, emphasizing communication, teamwork, and long-term investment in people.

He's also been selected as a capsule communicator, the voice between Mission Control and astronauts in orbit. His transition from soldier to spacesuit test subject to the person talking astronauts through missions shows how diverse paths lead to extraordinary contributions.

From war zones to the Moon, Theriot proves that curiosity and dedication can launch anyone into their dreams.