John A. Blevins, Ph.D.

More than 50 years after U.S. astronauts took the first steps on the moon, NASA is laying the groundwork for a return trip, thanks to John Blevins, the chief engineer of the Space Launch System rocket.

“We would not be able to return Americans to the moon without him—unequivocally,” said Amit Kshatriya, deputy associate administrator of NASA’s Moon to Mars Program.

Over a career in government spanning more than two decades, Blevins has become one of the premier rocket scientists at NASA, working as a leading innovator in propulsion research before doing aerodynamics work for the Ares launch vehicle, the precursor to the SLS rocket. He recalled joining a team that “started from scratch” on the new rocket in 2011 before moving to the chief engineer role in 2017.

In that role, Blevins was responsible for all the technical decisions for an “incredibly complex machine,” according to John Hanson, former deputy chief engineer for systems engineering and integration for the Moon to Mars program. Under Blevins’ leadership, NASA calculated everything from structural needs to how to safely destroy a rocket that might harm the public.

In addition, Blevins led the engineering team involved in the SLS launch and became a “trusted agent” for thousands of people across the country who worked on the project, according to Kshatriya.

As a result of this work, the SLS rocket had a successful first flight in November 2022, when it sent the uncrewed Orion spacecraft to orbit the moon as part of NASA’s Artemis program. Now, the SLS is gearing up to send astronauts on a trip around the moon in 2026, enabling humans to land on the lunar surface in 2027 and eventually explore farther reaches of space.

The lunar mission will provide scientists with knowledge about human travel and survival in outer space, enable the acquisition of natural resources like water ice that can be purified into drinking water and eventually refined into hydrogen fuel and oxygen, and offer clues about establishing a permanent presence on another world. It could also spur the creation of thousands of skilled jobs in a new lunar economy.

Blevins had to tackle crucial technical problems facing the first flight.

“We had some key challenges, especially with the hydrogen system,” said John Honeycutt, the SLS manager. Blevins “led activities to get us a workaround for a measurement that we were relying on but did not have.” Honeycutt called it “the best piece of engineering” for solving a problem he has ever seen.

Blevins now leads the engineering for more powerful versions of the SLS that will be able to send, in one launch, the Orion spacecraft to the vicinity of the moon with components for the world’s first lunar space station. The outpost is designed to enable scientific discoveries that pave the way for human missions to Mars and further explorations of space.

While working in the car industry before joining NASA in 1999, Blevins interacted with government agencies and saw they tried to “add honesty, integrity and knowledge to the engineering community.” He wanted to be a part of that endeavor.

He concedes that his is a risky mission that involves understanding “the machine,” flagging risks and making the final decision whether to go to launch.

But he feels blessed, he said, to have the opportunity to “work for one of the best organizations on the planet.”