Alumni Post Details

We are pleased to share Mr. Peter Psara, class of 2006, will address the Memorial High School class of 2023 at commencement ceremonies on June 1, 2023.

Mr. Psaras graduated from Campbell Memorial High School in 2006 as Valedictorian of his class.

Pursuing an interest in Aerospace Engineering, he attended Purdue University in West Lafayette, IN, where he received his Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Space Propulsion and Aerospace Vehicle Design. Mr. Psaras then went on to pursue a career at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration at the John Glenn Research Center in 2012, where he began work on NASA’s Evolutionary Xenon Thruster (NEXT), which launched in November 2021. NEXT propelled the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft which was aimed at testing methods of planetary defense.

Since 2016, he has been an integral part of the Artemis program, which is a NASA collaboration with the European Space Agency, Lockheed Martin and various other commercial partners aimed at returning astronauts to the Moon to establish a permanent human lunar presence. NASA will use what they learn on and around the Moon to take the next giant leap: Sending the first astronauts to Mars. He previously served as the Reaction Control System Engineering Lead for the European Service Module successfully guiding the development of RCS flight hardware for Artemis-1 and 2 though assembly, Acceptance and Qualification testing and delivery.

Mr. Psaras is currently the Lead Engineer for all Propulsion Subsystem Components, responsible for guiding flight hardware through development, testing, integration into the vehicle and flight operation support. The culmination of these efforts has resulted in a successful completion of the Artemis-1 mission on Dec 11, 2022, setting the distance record for a human space rated vehicle at 260,000 miles, previously set by Apollo 13.

Mr. Psaras will be representing NASA Propulsion as part of the mission evaluation team at Houston’s Johnson Space Center for Artemis 2, a crewed mission which will launch in November 2024.