Alex Apyan: Get to Know the Former UC Bearcat Turned Orion Program Team Member

For Cincinnati graduate Alex Apyan, his time as a student-athlete on the Bearcats’ football team has only been a precursor to a successful career that currently has him as an integral part of the Mission Planning and Analysis team with the Orion Program. A native of Chattanooga, Tenn., and graduate of Cincinnati’s aerospace engineering program, Apyan was a long snapper for the Bearcats from 2007-11. Now, he has an important role in the multi-purpose crew vehicle used in NASA’s Artemis program, helping the first crewed flight launch last week. Learn about how Alex’s experience at UC prepared him to think beyond Earth in our Q&A below:

What’s your involvement with the Artemis II project?
I work in Mission Planning and Analysis for the Orion program, serving as the lead for Integrated Vehicle Performance and Solar Array Integration for the spacecraft. In mission planning, it comes down to whether or not we are capable of flying the mission as designed. Do we need to change the mission or change the vehicle to be ready to fly? Does the vehicle have the capability, such as the necessary propulsive power, to perform?

In addition to the already challenging prospect of planning unprecedented moon missions and building out sustained space exploration capabilities, the newly-appointed NASA administrator announced an accelerated launch schedule, targeting three Artemis missions over the next two or three years. These will include one Earth orbit mission where we aim to practice rendezvousing with our prospective lunar landers followed by two moon-landing missions, which I’m excited to help plan, influence the design of the mission, and ultimately lay out a path to closure for mission design and readiness to fly as part of highly-skilled team. The challenges laid out before us motivate us to dig deep and work harder. I am grateful for my time in UC football and the UC engineering program in helping me handle those challenges.

How long have you been a part of this?
I started working at NASA in 2013, after leaving UC. Initially, I worked in flight control for the International Space Station and then for Boeing Starliner. Then, in November 2021, I moved over to the Vehicle Integration Office within the Orion Program, where I immediately began working on a task to show Orion could fly Artemis IV and carry a 10-ton payload to lunar orbit, a task for which I received the NASA Silver Achievement Medal.

What propelled you to get started going down this path in the first place?
As a kid, I loved flying on airplanes. And I got to grow up in the golden age of the Space Shuttle. I loved watching shuttle launches when I was young. It was incredibly exciting when the orbiter main engines lit right before liftoff. Now, I get to help the next generation of vehicles launch to new heights. It certainly gets the adrenaline pumping a little bit more these days but I know it’s important to be laser locked in to ensure a successful launch and mission.

How did your experience at UC prepare you?
The University of Cincinnati prepared me in many ways. UC has a strong engineering program with a good reputation, including down here in Texas. John McCullough, who is an administrator in exploration ops at NASA and former Flight Director, graduated from UC in the 1980s. Dr. Mark Turner and Dr. Paul Orkwis, two of my professors at Cincinnati, both are extremely well-respected in the industry. I give them both, in addition to others, credit for being keys to success for students. Dr. Turner has a way to inspire you to learn, and Dr. Orkwis pushed us to grind out a high volume of repeated challenges, very similar to the environment I work in today.

On the football side, I gained a lot of critical soft skills that laid the path for my career in flight operations, which are highly valued there and in leadership positions, and were paramount in my success. So much so, I began looking for athletes with engineering degrees when we would evaluate candidates. I had even hoped to convince Alec Pierce to come work for us, but I think his chosen career path is working out pretty well. Jokes aside, data connects athletes to thriving in leadership. They have proven to be able to handle pressure situations and work with a variety of constituents.

Long-term goals personally for your involvement with the program?
For me, I’m very much team player. I do have aspirations to lead but mostly in a capacity that ensures the most success for the enterprise and agency. I’m trying to do the best I can wherever I fit to ensure we have success as a team. I really look forward to the future and think I’ll continue to obtain opportunities at higher levels once I gain some more of that necessary experience.

Is there an interesting inside story from this latest mission you can share?
I obviously can’t get into too much detail but, on ascent, we had a relatively significant and unexpected issue with a solar array that we had to work through to show we could continue the mission to the moon. As I mentioned, I am the Solar Array Integration Lead for the spacecraft, and so I had to work across our broad team including international partners to diagnose the issue. All around, there was great execution by our team, assessing the issue and working with everybody down to the suppliers of the actual hardware. It wasn’t anything we’d witnessed before on Artemis I or ground testing. It was a great example of dealing with the unknown, which is a paramount skill in this world.

Anything else you’d like to add?
Having lived in Houston for 13 years now and looking back on my time in Cincinnati, the city and the University are truly special places. I grew up in Tennessee, but I think of Cincinnati like a second hometown. My kids love coming back to visit every year, and we eat Skyline Chili once a week thanks to Kroger stocking it here in Houston. The University has an irreplicable setting and environment for students to thrive, and the city has a soul to it, not unlike the state of Texas in how it takes pride in its identity.

I’d also say that one of the things I love most about working at NASA is that there are so many bright, motivated people to push us beyond what we’ve done. People of extremely diverse backgrounds and you see how that shines with the team. This group has been a joy to work with. I can’t say enough about how well the team works together. This includes the astronauts, who are genuinely incredible people. Christina (Koch), one of the mission specialists on the mission, is a friend of mine and I am thrilled to see her have this opportunity to make history and inspire others, including my three daughters, to believe that they can do things that people once thought impossible.