That preparation involves people from NASA and the U.S. Navy practicing at sea with a representative Orion spacecraft. They rehearse retrieving astronauts and bringing them and the spacecraft back to a ship, NASA said. Artemis II was planned to send four astronauts around the Moon and back. [S1]

Villarreal’s earlier work was on the other end of the mission. As deputy flow director for Artemis I, she was responsible for integrating, stacking and testing the Space Launch System rocket and Orion inside the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. [S1]

Originally from Cartagena, Colombia, Villarreal moved to Miami at age 10, hoping to enter aerospace. She joined NASA in 2007 and also worked in the International Space Station Program’s operations division, according to the agency. [S1]

Source documents

  1. I Am Artemis: Lili Villarrealhttps://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/kennedy/i-am-artemis-lili-villarreal/