Identifying Critical Knowledge Gaps for NASA’s Lunar Return: Insights from Richard Spolzino

“I want to be able to look at a rocket launch and say, ‘I touched a piece of this.’”

That’s how Richard Spolzino describes his goal—not a title, a specific mission, or even NASA itself, but the ability to point to something tangible and know his contribution made it possible. At NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, he works on Moon Base’s mission architecture and systems interoperability team, identifying what NASA still doesn’t know about the Moon and Mars and ensuring those gaps are addressed before they become issues.

“For me, it kept coming back to where can I have the most impact? Where can my work touch the most things?“

Spolzino never imagined he would end up in this role.

He began college as a history major, then switched to a physics track at Santa Clara University with plans to pursue astrophysics. A research stint at Lick Observatory studying interstellar dust polarization revealed two insights: the work fascinated him, but he realized, “I don’t think staying up all night is for me.”

After graduating, he entered Officer Candidate School in the Navy with hopes of becoming a jet pilot. When that path didn’t work out, the detour led him to a graduate program at the University of Houston that blended aerospace engineering and space architecture—not the habitat‑focused kind many envision, but the systems‑level perspective where a lunar oxygen plant links to the rovers that supply it, which connect to the processor and ultimately to the user drawing down the resource. “I was always more interested in how all the pieces fit together than in any single component,” he says.

When asked if he had always dreamed of working at NASA, he answers honestly: no.

He says, “I really admire people who have nurtured that drive their whole lives.” For him, the question repeatedly returns to, “Where can I have the greatest impact? Where can my work touch the most things?” A University of Houston program with strong ties to Johnson Space Center put NASA on his radar alongside other industry and government options. What attracted him wasn’t the agency’s prestige, but the scale of the challenges and the direct line he saw to senior decision‑makers shaping the return to the Moon.

He adds that this is also why NASA is worth considering for those who aren’t certain it’s their calling. The culture rewards individuals who take on responsibilities beyond their assigned role and gives early‑career staff the opportunity to grow into challenges larger than their job description—something he doubts he would have found advancing more slowly in industry.

Spolzino’s daily work revolves around a seemingly simple concept: the data gap.

He explains, “You can think of it as synonymous with a knowledge gap—a way of documenting what we don’t know.” Consider the geotechnical properties of lunar regolith—moon dust, essentially, but the details matter immensely. How much weight can it support? What is its shear strength? Answering these questions influences everything from how far a rover can safely travel to whether a habitat’s foundation will remain stable.

A data gap formally outlines what we don’t know, why it matters, what current knowledge falls short, and, crucially, a specific, measurable target that industry and international partners can aim for. “Once we’ve identified what’s missing,” he says, “our partners can review that list and see exactly where their contribution would be most valuable.”

His team began with roughly 25 published data gaps last year and is on track to reach 60 by the end of this year.

The concept only proves useful when it influences decisions, and Spolzino points to two recent cases where it did.

When the lunar lander company now known as Voyager (formerly Astrobotic) was preparing its upcoming Griffin‑1 mission, the team did not help them choose which instruments to fly, since that was already decided. Instead, Spolzino’s team assisted them in prioritizing which data should be sent home first through a communication link that cannot transmit everything at once. “How do you prioritize all the data you wish to collect, and what gets returned through that constrained pipeline?” he asks.

On the opposite side of the pipeline, Spolzino has spent recent months evaluating proposed instruments—spectrometers, sample‑collection tools, and technology demonstrations—against the published data gaps to help leadership decide what merits flight. Some proposals align cleanly with a documented need; others do not match anything NASA has identified as missing. “That filter helps narrow down what advances as a genuine candidate,” he says. Industry partners have taken note, and leadership now requires companies pitching new instruments to demonstrate how their proposal maps to a data gap before discussions proceed further.

Spolzino admits the role reshaped an assumption he carried from graduate school—that NASA had everything figured out and that its reputation meant every question already had an answer somewhere inside its walls.

Three years later, he sees things differently. “Maintaining NASA’s reputation requires constant, deliberate effort,” he says. “Everyone is genuinely trying to move in the right direction, but it isn’t automatic.” This realization clarified his view: the agency operates on people solving problems in real time, creating space for early‑career professionals to contribute meaningfully rather than merely executing someone else’s plan.

His advice to students considering NASA is practical, not sentimental: grades matter less than many assume. “The projects you work on and the results they produce are what people notice first,” he says. He recommends joining clubs, taking on real projects, and building something tangible. “It’s less about credentials and more about giving yourself something to show up with.”

The Three-Body Problem trilogy by Liu Cixin

Spolzino was already deep into the second book, The Dark Forest, on a flight from New York to Houston when the plane was diverted to San Antonio. “I didn’t mind being three or four hours late,” he says. “I had that book, and I was just devouring it.”

Kerbal Space Program

An older game, but a formative one. Spolzino credits it with cementing his interest in space before college even began. “It’s a space‑program simulator where you build rockets piece by piece, and the physics are simplified yet accurate enough that you’re doing much of the same math as an actual mission‑design tool,” he says. “That really had a huge impact on me realizing that space was the field I wanted to pursue.”

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