Lindsey Waitt, who dreamed of working for NASA as a young girl raised in Worcester, Massachusetts, has joined the space agency as a test project engineer supporting the Artemis launch team at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Waitt earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering with a concentration in aerospace engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and later completed a master's degree in space operations from the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs.
Waitt's childhood inspiration came during a middle school visit to Worcester Polytechnic Institute in the late 1990s, when she met NASA Space Shuttle astronauts Michael Lopez-Alegria and Albert Sacco Jr., a former professor at the college. After graduation, she worked as a systems engineer on radar flight test missions for a defense contractor, and then worked as a systems engineer and program manager at a small satellite company in Cape Canaveral before joining NASA.
During the Artemis II launch in April, Waitt became certified to sit on the launch console during dynamic pre- and post-launch operations for the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft. She is now a NASA civil servant with the Artemis launch team, serving as one of 14 test project engineers. According to officials, test project engineers serve as the main hub of experts for technical tests and launch activities, coordinating resolutions across different subsystems during rocket launch operations.
Waitt was among the last to join NASA through the agency's insourcing initiative announced earlier this year. The Artemis program aims to enable humans to return to the surface of the Moon, marking the first time NASA has sent humans around the Moon in over 50 years.
