NAZARETH, Pa. – A man from Northampton County is directly tied to the Artemis II project.<\/p>\n
As an Associate Chief Engineer, Jason Powell of Nazareth helped develop the rockets that launched Artemis II into space, and propelled the Orion Capsule on its path to the moon.<\/p>\n
Space has been Powell’s career path for 25 years, and has been his passion since he was a boy going through Nazareth public schools.<\/p>\n
“I struggle with the words for it. Because it really does have that kind of gravity in the heart,” Powell said.<\/p>\n
With one day remaining on the historic Artemis II Mission, Powell says the mission has been a tremendous success but one of the most dangerous aspects remains.<\/p>\n
“The mission’s not done until you have boots back on Earth. And we’re looking forward to a clean re-entry,” said Powell.<\/p>\n
The astronauts will break through Earth’s atmosphere at temperatures reaching 5,000 degrees.<\/p>\n
Powell says ‘he’ entered this Earth with space as his path, attending launches with his mom, and studying space as a kid.<\/p>\n
He gained knowledge of rockets and engineering, which has been instrumental in leading America on a return path to the Moon.<\/p>\n
Powell says his is stunned by the images sent back to Earth.<\/p>\n
“Seeing our blue oasis against the stark black of space, and you see our dusty Moon, in the foreground, it’s amazing,” Powell said.<\/p>\n
Powell envisions a Moon landing by the end of the decade, with astronauts on Mars to follow.<\/p>\n
Powell says he struggled with dyslexia, and that none of his success would have been possible without the support of his teachers in the Lehigh Valley. Such a small world.<\/p>\n
“It was quite a struggle. To grow up from a small town, have a learning disability, and work hard to get through school, it didn’t come easy to me,” shared Powell. “And I am just honored to have been able to do this.”<\/p>\n
Powell now lives and works with NASA from his home in Alabama.<\/p>\n
He is already working on Artemis III, which will test docking the Lunar Lander and the capsule in low earth orbit.<\/p>\n
From there, Artemis IV will return humans to the Moon, likely by end of the decade.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NAZARETH, Pa. – A man from Northampton County is directly tied to the Artemis II project. As an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":161844,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[214,153,155,154,5750],"class_list":["post-161843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-_homepage_top_stories","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-nazareth-northampton-area"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161843","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=161843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161843\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}