Gary Jordan, voice of the Artemis II, was shaped by Seneca Valley
Gary Jordan, manager of communications and public affairs at the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, never anticipated a career with NASA when he was a Seneca Valley student.
“I never followed space missions, shuttle missions, when I was a kid. My family was never really into that. Growing up here in Pennsylvania, in Butler County, I never really thought of that as something I would do,” Jordan said.
Years later, Jordan is an employee in NASA’s Office of Communications. As the public affairs officer, he was one of five “consult positions” for NASA’s broadcast of last month’s Artemis II mission who sat in mission control during the launch.
“All have distinct roles. Ours is to translate all of that information and send it out to the public,” Jordan said.
He said the idea of ever thinking about working at NASA was initially “far-fetched,” and never hit him until college.
He loved “Star Wars,“ space and action movies and the fantasy aspects of films. He wanted to pursue filmmaking. However, he said he was not very “artsy,” and became a marketing major at Penn State instead.
He was not entirely sure what to do with his degree. By chance, he stumbled upon a NASA booth at a career fair. When he found out about the space administration’s public affairs office — which includes strategic communication and live broadcasting — memories of those action films came rushing back to him.
Jordan also credits his former teacher at Seneca Valley, Dan McKosky, who taught a TV-production class, for not only preparing him for his current role, but also spurring his interest in broadcasting.
“It was around the time where you’re looking at all the different career possibilities, and what you’re going to do for the rest of your life. It’s a hard thing to do as a 16-, 17-year-old,” Jordan said. “I had supportive friends, supportive family. Seneca’s a great school, and I think a lot of people from Seneca are able to end up at great universities. I still talk to people to this day who are both Seneca Valley and Penn State grads.”
Discussions about Jordan’s commentator assignment date back about three years, he said, while planning stages of the mission were well underway.
Jordan has done commentary from the mission control center for about 10 years now.
“It really took years of working toward a certain level of proficiency to get in a hot seat like that, because it’s a unique spacecraft,” Jordan said. “This type of system has only launched once before, but there were no people on it. So this one came with a whole new slew of requirements and differences, and communications going over the air. I had to be familiar with all these things.”
“It took 10 years of commentary to be ready for that moment,” he added.
The ascent commentator is a prestigious position within the realm of NASA launches, Jordan said, and he wanted to work hard to do it justice. This included partaking in 22 simulations over the past year to prepare himself for a wide possibility of outcomes. Still, he points to the hard work of his co-workers — other flight controllers had to do hundreds of simulations, he said.
The simulations involved computer-generated data that closely resembles a real launch that would flow into mission control.
“They throw in different scenarios to test you in a situation where things go wrong, how to talk about this on a bad day,” Jordan said. “You have to take it incredibly seriously. I think the training flow for that was about a year. It could have been more, but it was just the posture of where we were a year ago that we finally decided on the assignments, and had to move forward with them.”
When the big day finally arrived on April 1, NASA sent three Americans and one Canadian on a record-breaking voyage 252,000 miles from Earth. At times, Artemis II reached speeds of up to 24,500 mph.
When the broadcast aired the launch, NASA commentator Derrol Nail started with the countdown to liftoff. About 30 seconds later, Jordan took control of the broadcast. “Houston now controlling the flight of Integrity on the Artemis II mission around the moon,” he said.
“It will be a defining moment of my life, this moment and this period of time, from launch to splashdown. All of the preparation that went into it, and just being a part of it, wow,” Jordan said while looking back on those chaotic 10 days.
When splashdown finally happened, Jordan had hardly any time to celebrate. He remained in his office, glued to live feeds, making sure the broadcast continued to go well.
“It took a couple of days until after splashdown for it to really resonate with me that I was a part of this moment in history,” Jordan said.
The next launch of the Artemis Program — Artemis III — is scheduled for late 2027, with more to follow.
As manager of communications and public affairs at the Johnson Space Center, Jordan, the once curious Seneca Valley student, is preparing for whatever history lies ahead.
“We were having early conversations about lessons learned. We were thinking about metrics, and general lessons from the mission, but we’re also looking ahead and the reality is the next mission is going to include lunar landers,” said Jordan. “We’re all going to have to dive in and learn a brand new space craft for these types of operations.”
