Liana Wu watched in awe from inside the Kennedy Space Center as NASA’s Artemis II made its historic liftoff in April.
Wu, ’23, is a systems engineer for NASA’s Artemis Rocket program, working on software development, hardware testing and console operating for the communications and tracking system team.
As part of the Artemis II mission, Wu helped send astronauts around the moon and back. It was the first crewed flight beyond low Earth orbit since 1972.
Being a part of the Artemis mission was an experience that Wu said was hard to put into words.
“[I] can’t convey the emotions of seeing a true successful launch,” Wu wrote in a personal newsletter earlier this year. “Our astronauts traveled around the moon and back!”
While at the UW, Wu received a leadership minor from the Community Engagement and Leadership Education (CELE) Center, a 25-credit program that helps students develop leadership skills in professional and personal life.
The Leadership Minor helped Wu understand the theory of leadership and gain practical skills, like public speaking.
“It gave me more perspective of how leadership is broken down and its different styles,” Wu said in the CELE Center’s Leadership Minor newsletter last year. “My leadership style statement is still something I remind myself to encompass every day.”