{"id":156329,"date":"2026-04-03T13:51:51","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T13:51:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/156329\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T13:51:51","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T13:51:51","slug":"berks-county-native-helps-power-artemis-ii-launch-from-behind-scenes-berks-regional-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/156329\/","title":{"rendered":"Berks County native helps power Artemis II launch from behind scenes | Berks Regional News"},"content":{"rendered":"

DOUGLASSVILLE, Pa. \u2013 On Wednesday, the launch of the Artemis II rocket was an historic moment seen around the world. But behind the scenes, Cole Werley, a Berks Catholic graduate, now works at NASA\u2019s Kennedy Space Center.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe whole day just went so smoothly, and everyone couldn’t stop talking about how\u2026we\u2019re going today. Like, this is happening today. It was super exciting,\u201d Werley said.<\/p>\n

He was there at 6 a.m.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe anticipation just kind of builds, hour after hour,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

But this journey started long ago, back in Douglassville.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy dad and I used to do the model rockets a lot when I was younger,\u201d Werley said. \u201cThat was definitely a huge inspiration.\u201d<\/p>\n

That interest turned into a career, from Berks Catholic to the University of Pittsburgh to NASA.<\/p>\n

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It all started for Cole Werley, a Berks Catholic graduate now working at NASA, inside a barn in his family\u2019s backyard.<\/p>\n

“I got involved with some of the research labs there, particularly the Center for Space, High-Performance and Resilient Computing, where I got to work on some student-led experiments that went to the International Space Station,\u201d Werley said. \u201cSo that was kind of the beginning of getting into NASA.”<\/p>\n

Now, he\u2019s helping capture every moment of the mission.<\/p>\n

“We have a lot of highly energetic things happening during launch. And so what we’re interested in is slowing that down and getting a really, really good picture of it at a very high rate so that you can go back and perform photogrammetry and reconstruct those trajectories to make sure that there’s either a system that\u2019s performing well, or if there’s any damage to the vehicle, real-time decision-making can be made,\u201d Werley explained.<\/p>\n

For kids back home, he has a message.<\/p>\n

\u201cStay inspired,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s never been a better time to get into space exploration. Reach for the stars.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DOUGLASSVILLE, Pa. \u2013 On Wednesday, the launch of the Artemis II rocket was an historic moment seen around…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":156330,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[70186,349,70572,30949,128,130,129,70876,70875],"class_list":{"0":"post-156329","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-reading","8":"tag-artemis-ii","9":"tag-berks-county","10":"tag-cole-werley","11":"tag-nasa","12":"tag-reading-city","13":"tag-reading-city-headlines","14":"tag-reading-city-news","15":"tag-space-exploration","16":"tag-space-launch"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156329\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}