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Lisa Mazzuca, '91

Search and Rescue Mission Manager played a critical role in NASA's Artemis II mission

For 10 days in April 2026, NASA's Aretmis II mission held the world's fascination. Not only was it the first manned spaceflight to conduct a lunar flyby in half a century, but also, its astronauts traveled farther from Earth than anyone in human history—more than 250,000 miles—testing deep space systems and laying the groundwork for future Moon landings.

At the heart of the mission's successful conclusion was Loyola alumna Lisa Mazzuca, '91. As NASA's mission manager for search and rescue, Mazzuca played a pivotal role as Artemis II re-entered Earth's atmosphere and splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on April 10. Mazzuca and her team operated 24/7 on console at Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in Maryland, at Mission Control in Houston, Texas, and on the ship awaiting Artemis II's return. 

"I was the one on the bridge who provides the capsule location and astronaut locations if they had to egress from the ship, so my first thought was, 'is the capsule on a nominal trajectory?'" Mazzuca said. "The good thing there is that NASA Mission Control tracks the capsule throughout the mission and knew where it was supposed to splashdown, so we knew approximately where to look in the sky."

"So, I'm looking, looking," Mazzuca paused, "and then I see a tiny object off the bow of the ship with some orange above it," Mazzuca said, which prompted "the biggest sigh of relief. It's hard to see such an object on the ocean a couple of miles away. That's why the ship relied on our office to give them range and bearing (distance and compass reading). That data comes from our ground station at GSFC."

Mazzuca and her team had antennas pointed toward the west coast to pick up satellites with search and rescue (SAR) payloads between the east and west coast. The data was beamed down to GSFC and a location was calculated. From there, they transferred the data to Mission Control and the ship using a graphical location tool that Mazzuca's team had built. 

"Because this was a nominal splashdown, nerves calmed down quickly," Mazzuca said. "If things didn't go as planned, like the capsule landing out of sight of NASA assets, or something went wrong with the capsule that forced the astronauts to egress, then that's a whole different story."

To provide a sense of the pressure her team was facing, Mazzuca referenced Apollo 13, a film that chronicled NASA's efforts to return three astronauts to Earth following a catastrophic oxygen tank exlosion during their mission.

Despite three-and-a-half decades of experience with GSFC, Mazzuca agreed that she was nervous about this crucial mission.

"No doubt!" Mazzuca exclaimed. "NASA hasn't done this since the Apollo era, and our SAR team working on console and the ship to provide coordinates has never been done, but our team was ready, and we knew what we could control for a given challenge during the mission, so the idea was to stay focused and execute what we trained to do. But to say we weren't nervous during launch and landing would be a lie."

A year before Artemis II launched, Mazzuca and her team wrote nominal and contingency-related operational procedures, ensuring they knew how to interface with NASA Mission Control. After many months of simulations, the team was able to plan for all potential problems with the ground station at GSFC as well as the higher-level mission problems at Mission Control. And most importantly, they were able to present the capsule's real-time coordinates to the Navy ship charged with finding the capsule and recovering the astronauts.

"Technology is a roadmap to increasing lives saved," Mazzuca said in reference to the installation of Advanced Next-Generation Emergency Locator (ANGEL) in the astronauts' life vests. 

Employing the new Cospas-Sarsat technology, ANGEL beacons rely on transponders hosted on global navigation satellite systems to detect distress beacons and relay their signals to ground stations. These new personal-use beacons allowed NASA to track the astronauts more accurately than the previous iteration developed more than 40 years ago. 

"It's extremely difficult to find a person bobbing in the ocean," Mazzuca said, "so knowing exactly where they would be was critical for rescue. Fortunately, we didn't have to use them!"

Mazzuca's preparation for the Artemis II mission began with her days at Loyola University Maryland.

"My path changed when I had a planetary and small bodies—meteors for exmple—physics class with Brother Guy Consolmagno from the Vatican Observatory, who was a visiting astronomer," Mazzuca said. "That was my senior year, and he was merciless on us! But I thrived and immediately saw how I was going to apply my mathematics major. His guidance was clear, and his faith was interwoven with astronomy, something many people struggle to unify. NASA came onsite for interviews. I managed not flub up, and I was hired. My path was set, and it's been a great career that I will look back on fondly once I retire. TBD on the retirement!"

Mazzuca credits her success not only to her talents and ingenuity, but also because the University prepares students for lives of service and significance.

"I see Loyola as the spark that put me on the path I was meant to be on," Mazzuca said. "From the professors that I had very strong connections to (thank you, Dr. Young!) and who helped give me confidence to excel in my classes to the strong theology and philosophy viewpoints I needed to round out the STEM road I was on. I think the combination was needed to best get me to understand a larger picture of humanity and make me capable of eventually being a leader."

To learn more about Mazzuca and her NASA career, please visit the Loyola magazine website.

Willie  "Billy" Edwards, '85

A Legal Pioneer Advancing Justice for People with FASD and Intellectual Disabilities

William "Billy" Edwards is internationally recognized as a pioneering legal advocate and educator whose work has transformed how the justice system understands fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD) and intellectual disabilities. For nearly three decades, Edwards has led efforts to ensure that courts, attorneys, and policymakers respond to neurodevelopmental disabilities with knowledge, fairness, and compassion.

Edwards first emerged as a leader in this field in 1997, when he delivered one of the earliest legal trainings on FASD to the Louisiana Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. Since that time, he has organized and led nearly 200 FASD trainings and consulted with attorneys around the United States and in several countries worldwide.

A Deputy Public Defender with the Los Angeles County Public Defender's Office for more than 24 years, Edwards currently serves in the Los Angeles County Mental Health Court and the office's Neurocognitive Disorders Unit, representing clients with serious mental illness and neurodevelopmental and neurocognitive disorders. Prior to joining the Los Angeles office, he worked on capital habeas appeals in Florida. He co-authored a piece in the Journal of Mental Retardation that was cited by the U.S. Supreme Court in Atkins v. Virginia, the landmark decision exempting people with intellectual disabilities from the death penalty.

Edwards' national policy impact includes two terms on the President's Committee for People with Intellectual Disabilities, a federal advisory body established to advise the President and the Secretary of Health and Human Services. During his service, Edwards became increasingly focused on FASD and launched a series of attorney trainings that continue today. In 2011, he served as editor of a landmark two-volume issue of the Journal of Psychiatry and Law devoted entirely to the legal aspects of FASD.

He has also played a major leadership role within professional and advocacy organizations. Edwards helped draft and secure adoption of a 2012 American Bar Association resolution urging all criminal justice professionals to be informed about FASD. He served on the Board of Directors of FASD United from 2014 to 2022 and was reappointed beginning in January 2025. He is the founder and current chair of FASD United's Justice Advisory Committee and has previously served on the board of the Disability Rights Legal Center in Los Angeles.

His contributions have been widely recognized. in 2014, Edwards received the Dr. Ann Streissguth Annual Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Field of FASD and the Law and was inducted into the Tom and Linda Daschle FASD Hall of Fame. On December 1, 2025, the American Bar Association announced Edwards as the recipient of its prestigious Paul G. Hearne Award for Disability Rights, honoring exemplary service in advancing the rights, dignity, and access to justice for people disabilities. The ABA cited his lifelong dedication to educating legal professionals, increasing awareness of FASD, and advocating for individuals with intellectual disabilities throughout the justice system. The award will be formally presented in September 2026.

Edwards is also known for building multidisciplinary pro bono collaborations among clinicians, scientists, legal professionals, and advocates to help courts understand mitigation and appropriate alternatives to incarceration. As a result of this work, many of his clients have avoided incarceration and instead received critical, life-changing services through California Regional Centers.

Through litigation, scholarship, policy work, and global education, Billy Edwards has fundamentally reshaped legal understanding of FASD and intellectual disabilities, leaving an enduring impact on the pursuit of justice for some of the most vulnerable individuals in the legal system.