Michael G. Wood watched the Artemis II launch on April 1 and felt the same thing he felt when the rocket launched for the first time three years earlier: a quiet, running inventory of every assumption.

These were the assumptions his team made about environments and loads. The margins for error that were thinner in some places than others. They relied on qualification tests and analyses that he hoped were conservative enough. Wood led the engineering on the first version of that rocket's cryogenic core stage and upper stage as Boeing's chief engineer for the Space Launch System program. The design that carried an uncrewed Orion spacecraft in 2022 was fundamentally the same one now carrying four astronauts toward the moon.

"Oh man, I hope we got that right," he said during a recent interview.

An American Story

Wood graduated from the U of A in 1984 with a degree in chemical engineering from the Ralph E. Martin Department of Chemical Engineering.

Michael Wood, a 1984 University of Arkansas chemical engineering graduate, spent more than 25 years at Boeing working on programs ranging from the International Space Station to the Space Launch System rocket that powered NASA's Artemis missions.

Over a 30-year career at Boeing, he helped build the first piece of the International Space Station, designed the systems that keep its crew alive and led the engineering effort on the most powerful rocket NASA has ever flown with a human crew.

"I feel very fortunate and blessed to have gotten to do what I've got to do, and come from pretty humble beginnings," Wood said. "To me, it's the American story."

It almost didn't happen.

Wood was born in Batesville and grew up in Bald Knob. He had good grades and test scores but not much guidance on how to get to a university. He chose the U of A because it was accredited for engineering, in state and affordable. He was weighing pre-med against engineering and settled on chemical engineering because the degree seemed versatile and well paying. He had some financial insecurity at the time.

His first year, he was unfocused. He failed an introductory course taught by the late Distinguished Professor Charles Thatcher, who pulled Wood into his office afterward and told him he wasn't sure Wood had what it took to be an engineer.

That summer of 1980, Arkansas had more than 30 days of 100-degree weather, and Wood was doing manual labor building apartment buildings. In the blazing heat, Thatcher's words seared into him.

"I knew I had more potential," Wood said.

He went back in the fall, retook the course and set the curve. He graduated with honors in the Chemical Engineering Department.

Thatcher told that "comeback" story to other students for years.

After graduation, Wood went to work in the oil field. He spent summers laying oil rig water lines in Elk City, Oklahoma, then took a job with an oilfield service company doing hydraulic fracture work across central and south Texas. He averaged more than 100 hours a week.

The company was acquired by Schlumberger, and Wood was told he would be a field service supervisor for several more years. The work was hazardous, and the hours were long.

New Heights

Then Boeing called. The company was about to win the contract on Air Force One, the presidential aircraft ordered by Ronald Reagan and ultimately delivered to George H.W. Bush. Wood interviewed in Wichita, Kansas, and took the job. He worked on Air Force One from the day of contract award through nearly the full delivery.

An opening came up in Huntsville, Alabama. Boeing was looking specifically for chemical engineers to design and test environmental control and life support systems for the International Space Station. Wood saw a chance to finally apply his degree.

"It was all applied chemical engineering," he said.

The environmental control and life-support system is what makes the station habitable: cleaning and recirculating the air, purifying and recycling the water, managing temperature and humidity, even collecting the crew's perspiration and breath. The active and passive thermal control systems manage 500-degree temperature swings between sun-facing and deep-space cold. Wood led the design of all three systems.

"To this day, I think about where the low margins are," Wood said. "Did we understand anomalies well enough? Did we really cover all the bases?"

International Space

In the mid-1990s, Boeing asked Wood to step away from life-support work and take on a different assignment. NASA had contracted Boeing to buy a Russian-built spacecraft called the FGB, a functional cargo block that would become the first element of the International Space Station.

Boeing outfitted it with American computers, data cables and power converters, enabling connectivity between the U.S. and Russian segments of the station. Wood became the deputy program manager and technical leader of the effort.

He spent nearly five years working with the Russian aerospace company Khrunichev, traveling regularly to Moscow and learning enough Russian to get around the city. The collaboration carried significance beyond engineering. The U.S. ambassador to Russia, speaking at his Moscow residence on occasions Wood attended, would cite the space station as a symbol of peace and cooperation between the two nations.

The Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission, formed to facilitate U.S.-Russian cooperation, would open discussions about nuclear stockpile reductions by talking about the station.

"It was a clear example of immense cooperation between the U.S. and Russian governments," Wood said. "The space station was a great rallying point for international cooperation and easing tensions. It wasn't lost on me or the people there that we played a very significant role."

On Nov. 20, 1998, Wood stood at Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and watched the spacecraft his team managed launch on a Proton rocket. It was a cold, windy day.

The Russian rocket forces would give their weather forecast each morning and say the same thing: cold and windy, go for launch. The Proton, originally conceived as an intercontinental ballistic missile but repurposed as a space launch vehicle, was built to fly in harsh conditions. Now it was sending the first piece of a 15-nation science laboratory into orbit.

The spacecraft was named Zarya, the Russian word for sunrise.

The station has now been operating for nearly 30 years. The life support and thermal systems Wood helped design have far exceeded the reliability predictions his team put on paper.

Artemis I and II

In late 2012, Wood was asked to be the chief engineer for the Space Launch System, the super heavy-lift rocket Boeing was building for NASA's Artemis program. The program was approaching its preliminary design phase. Wood led the engineering team through detailed design, critical design review, the development of new friction stir welding technology at the Michoud Assembly Facility near New Orleans, Louisiana, and most of the qualification and build of the first Artemis core stage.

He retired from Boeing before the first launch but was invited back to watch. On Nov. 16, 2022, the SLS lifted off for Artemis I, an uncrewed test flight. Wood sat and watched, thinking about those margins.

When Artemis II launched on April 1 with NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen aboard, the rocket was fundamentally the same design.

"I was very proud of the first launch and extremely happy and relieved to see the successful launch with the crew," Wood said.

Beyond Sunrise

He and his wife, Carolyn, live south of Houston, Texas. They ballroom dance together and compete occasionally. They also enjoy camping, traveling and following the Astros. He remains a member of the Arkansas Academy of Chemical Engineers and tries to make it back for the induction ceremony each year.

He has maintained his relationship with the department for a simple reason.

"I felt like it gave me so many opportunities to do a lot of fun and exciting things," Wood said. "You just want to see it continue to be the best it can be, and see students come through there and have success."

He recently established an engineering college scholarship endowment for Arkansas high school graduates pursuing engineering or STEM fields.

Keisha Walters, head of the Ralph E. Martin Department of Chemical Engineering, said Wood's story carries weight with students considering the field.

"His career is a powerful example of how versatile a chemical engineering education can be," Walters said. "He took the fundamentals he learned here and applied them to keeping astronauts alive in space. That's the kind of story that changes how a prospective student thinks about what this degree can do."

About the College of Engineering:  The University of Arkansas College of Engineering is the state's largest engineering school, offering graduate and undergraduate degrees, online studies and interdisciplinary programs. It enrolls more than 4,700 students and employs more than 150 faculty and researchers along with nearly 200 staff members. Its research enterprise generated $47 million in new research awards in Fiscal Year 2025. The college's strategic plan, Vision 2035, seeks to build the premier STEM workforce in accordance with three key objectives: Initiating lifelong student success, generating transformational and relevant knowledge, and becoming the destination of choice among educators, students, staff, industry, alumni and the community. As part of this, the college is increasing graduates and research productivity to expand its footprint as an entrepreneurial engineering platform serving Arkansas and the world. The college embraces its pivotal role in driving economic growth, fueling innovation and educating the next generation of engineers, computer scientists and data scientists to address current and future societal challenges.