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Gurnee native reached for the moon. Now he’ll be steering spacecraft to lunar landing
As a high school student, studying physics in a classroom wasn’t enough for Curtis Szajkovics. So, he and fellow science aficionados designed a giant catapult that won international recognition.
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Gurnee native Curtis Szajkovics is a flight controller with Firefly Aerospace, which is launching its Blue Ghost lunar lander Wednesday on a mission to the moon. Courtesy of Firefly Aerospace
As a high school student, studying physics in a classroom wasn’t enough for Curtis Szajkovics. So, he and fellow science aficionados designed a giant catapult that won international recognition.
On Wednesday, the Gurnee native will aim higher when he serves as a flight controller with NASA contractor Firefly Aerospace, helping to guide a spacecraft to a moon landing.
The “Blue Ghost” lunar lander will launch from Kennedy Space Center in Florida as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services effort.
“It’s a dream of mine I’ve had since a kid to do something in space,” Szajkovics said last week in an interview.
The spacecraft is carrying 10 NASA science investigations that will increase understanding of the moon’s environment in preparation for future human travel there.
They include “looking for things like dust mitigation, how landing affects your environment and what the surface of the moon is actually made of,” Szajkovics explained.
As a kid crazy about science, “you get to a point where you think we know everything,” he said.
“And then you go to a place like the moon, and you start asking simple questions and realize we know very little,” Szajkovics added.
Growing up in Lake County, he attended Woodland Elementary and Woodland Middle schools, and Warren Township High School.
“I always wanted to be an astronaut,” said Szajkovics, whose early influences include “Star Wars” and “The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.”
Gurnee native Curtis Szajkovics is a flight controller with Firefly Aerospace, which is launching its Blue Ghost lunar lander Wednesday on a mission to the moon. Courtesy of Firefly Aerospace
At home, Szajkovics experimented with trying to take apart the VCR to turn it “into a robot and other ridiculous things,” he said.
But he found his niche in rocketry and astronomy clubs at school and a mentor in “super-supportive” physics teacher Pieter Kruenen.
As a system engineer at Austin-based Firefly Aerospace, Szajkovics’ job in creating Blue Ghost was “to talk to every single person on the program, making sure they’re on task and building what we need.”
As a flight controller, “I’m responsible for all communication and sending of commands to the spacecraft.”
The Blue Ghost lunar lander is scheduled to launch Wednesday on a mission to the moon. Gurnee native Curtis Szajkovics is a flight controller on the trip. Courtesy of Firefly Aerospace
The entire mission should last 60 days, with about 45 of them spent in orbit around the Earth and moon.
“That whole time we’re working with (NASA) payload teams to make sure they’re ready for the big moment when we land,” he said. “(That’s) when a lot of their science can finally happen.”
How difficult is sticking the moon landing?
“I wouldn’t say difficult, I would say exciting,” Szajkovics said. “We’ve practiced, we’ve done lots of research, we’ve done analysis, we’ve done projections. So we’re very prepared … but when it comes to space — there’s always surprises.
“You don’t know if you’re going to land on the side of a mountain or on a slope or if you’re going to have giant boulders you have to maneuver around,” he added. “Those are all things we account for in our design, but we won’t know what we’re going to see until we’re there.”
After over two years of working on Blue Ghost, “it’s definitely something we’re emotionally attached to,” Szajkovics said. “We walked by it every day.”
So, when the spacecraft was taken to Kennedy Space Center, it felt like a kid moving out of the house, he admitted.
“But we built it to go on a mission … and hopefully it will do what we designed it to do.”
Firefly Aerospace staff work on the Blue Ghost lunar lander, which will launch Wednesday on a mission to the moon. Courtesy of Firefly Aerospace
Szajkovics came close to space exploration in his previous job with a startup seeking to bring computers to the International Space Station. The company ran out of funding, which makes the launch of Blue Ghost even more meaningful.
“I don’t think it’s sunk in yet,” he said. “When we get that first photo, we’ll know what it’s like to look at the moon directly from our baby spacecraft we sent up there.”
Asked for advice to other aspiring astronauts, Szajkovics said, “The most interesting thing to me is the wide range of people who played into this.
“I’ve come through various jobs. I never thought it would lead to going to the moon and somehow it did.”
Attached to Blue Ghost is a nameplate listing the entire Firefly team, which could potentially remain for “millions of years,” Szajkovics said.
“My name going to be on the moon, which is just crazy to think about.”
Blue Ghost is scheduled to launch shortly after midnight Wednesday. For launch coverage, visit to nasa.gov/live.
Staff at Firefly Aerospace work on the Blue Ghost lunar lander, which is scheduled to launch Wednesday from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Courtesy of Firefly Aerospace
The Blue Ghost Mission 1 team assemble outside of the Firefly Aerospace facility in Texas. Courtesy of Firefly Aerospace
