NASA engineer Tom Percy drives integration of SpaceX and Blue Origin lunar landers

Tom Percy serves as the manager of systems engineering and integration for NASA’s Human Landing System Program, acting as the primary liaison with commercial partners SpaceX and Blue Origin to streamline the design, manufacture, testing, and certification of Artemis crewed landers. In this capacity, he ensures that the vehicles will operate safely with other NASA exploration assets as the agency pushes toward sustained lunar and future Mars missions.

Percy grew up in North Easton, Massachusetts, earned a mechanical engineering degree from the Rochester Institute of Technology, and gained early hands-on experience through the Great Moonbuggy Race, now the Human Exploration Rover Challenge. He later completed a master’s in aerospace engineering at Georgia Tech and a doctorate in aerospace systems engineering at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, focusing on propulsion and mission design.

Joining Marshall Space Flight Center in 2003, he has evaluated transportation concepts for human deep-space exploration. Following the high-profile Artemis II flight, Percy highlighted the program’s goal of sending astronauts on progressively more ambitious lunar missions to advance science, economics, and a lasting human presence on the Moon.