MOREHEAD, Ky. — Recently Morehead State University was honored in Washington for its role in ensuring a lunar landing mission in February was a success. The Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus mission encountered troubles landing, and that’s when Morehead State’s Space Science Center stepped in.

What You Need To Know

  • Morehead State's space science center is a NASA Space Grant university 

  • Students get real world experience in design, construction and testing of satellites  

  • The program was honored by NASA for its role in a moon landing from Intuitive Machines 

  • MSU offers a major and masters in space systems engineering

From a room inside its Space Science Center, Morehead State University Space Science Center engineers and students can communicate with spacecraft using a 21-meter space antenna on a hill overlooking the city. Ground station engineer Chloe Hart explained how it works to Spectrum News 1 on a scaled-down model.

“It’s perfectly shaped so that all of the signals that hit the dish will actually go back here to this focal point and that’s what collects all of that data from the spacecraft, and we can it back to those mission operations centers,” Hart said.

It’s a part of the NASA Deep Space Network. This past February, MSU played a role in the first American moon landing in 52 years when Intuitive Machines landed its Odysseus on the moon. But during landing, the spacecraft tipped over and lost communication, leading MSU to swiftly use its space antenna and department expertise.

“Morehead State University was able to bridge the mission operations center and the Deep Space Network together. We were able to get them talking to each other and hearing those commands,” Hart said.

Morehead State is a NASA Space Grant University and offers a distinctive major in space science engineering. Students get real world experience in the design, construction and testing of satellites before being launched into space.

“Companies come from all over the country (and world) and they rent out time on those facilities so it’s not just the missions we have here, the missions we’re behind, but it’s the missions where we’re supporting, the missions we help develop, their subsystems and all sorts of things,” said Christo Smith, a full-time engineer at the university.

MSU offers an undergraduate and graduate degree in space systems engineering. Smith got his masters from MSU and said the entire program has at least a 95% placement rate.

“We’ve had people go all over the country to preeminent institutions with what we’ve helped create a foundation for and generate very meaningful careers,” Smith said.

In April, MSU and its program were honored by the NASA administrator and U.S. Congressman Hal Rogers, R-Ky., for their efforts.

Intuitive Machines was the first private company to land on the moon.

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