For Deep Run HS graduate, a real-life moonshot

Alex Kaplan spent hours working on robots as part of Deep Run High School’s robotics team. Early next year, his work will land on the moon.

In the decade since Kaplan graduated from Deep Run, he has earned degrees in Aerospace, Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering from Virginia Tech and Stanford University. Now, Kaplan works as the Launch Vehicle Reuse Lead Engineer ​​at Firefly Aerospace near Austin, Texas, where he’s been working on the Blue Ghost Mission, a lunar lander set to travel to the moon.

When physics teacher Matt Wilson took over Deep Run’s robotics team in Kaplan’s junior year of high school, he knew Kaplan had the ambition to make it to space. 

“I knew he was going to do something in aerospace,” Wilson said. “He got the job with Firefly, and I knew he was gonna do cool stuff.” 

The Blue Ghost Mission will deliver 10 payloads to the lunar surface. These payloads will include collecting samples of lunar dust, an X-ray telescope to study the Earth's magnetic field and cameras to capture images of the lunar surface.

“This is pretty much gonna be a record-setting number of different experiments going on for an unmanned vehicle,” Kaplan said.

Kaplan was responsible for all of the mechanisms on the lander, which will operate on the lunar surface for 14 days, the length of one lunar day. 

“We will be capturing the lunar sunset as part of our contract with NASA,” said Risa Schnautz, Firefly’s director of marketing and communications.

The Blue Ghost mission is operating as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative, or CLPS, and launching on a SpaceX Falcon Nine rocket later this year. 

When Kaplan was growing up in Henrico County, NASA’s Mars Exploration Rovers and PBS specials about X-planes sparked his interest in aerospace and aviation. When he was in high school, SpaceX began launching rockets, and he became aware of the commercial side of space exploration. 

During his time at Deep Run, Kaplan helped to develop robots that complete a designated task for the annual FIRST Robotics Competition. FIRST, or For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, is a nonprofit organization that aims to advance STEM education internationally.

Competing on Deep Run’s FIRST Robotics Team and participating in other FIRST programs was instrumental in Kaplan’s career in engineering.

“Through those programs, I've really learned a lot, and kind of really built up my appreciation for engineering,” Kaplan said.

Now, Kaplan serves as a mentor for another FIRST Robotics team in Austin.

“It's super, super cool to be able to kind of inspire people going through school now,” Kaplan said.

Kaplan said it's important for students to have a safe place to try and fail. There’s always another season of robotics, so trying new things allows students to test the limits of what they’re building. 

“There isn’t necessarily a right answer,” Kaplan said.

Figuring out what works and what doesn’t is the biggest part of the process. Kaplan’s work at Firefly also uses a similar iterative building and testing process to make sure all of the mechanisms can function under stress.

“The same lessons that we use at Firefly is definitely something that we applied for the robotics competitions themselves,” Kaplan said.

The design, building and testing process for the Blue Ghost mission has been ongoing since 2021, Kaplan said. 

“It's been a pretty scrappy but pretty long process. So it's super, super cool to kind of see it all come together now as we're about to launch this year,” Kaplan said.

In Henrico, Wilson often uses Kaplan as an example of the careers that are possible for students if they continue with engineering. 

“I try to point that out, that look, if you stick with it and and go through this and actually get the information and skills that we're giving you, there's potential for you to go pro in engineering,” Wilson said.

Wilson still remembers Kaplan from the day he took over the team in 2011. 

“He was a junior that year, and I remember having the meeting with the parents, and he walked right up to me at the end, introduced himself, and asked me a whole bunch of questions,” Wilson said. “Within the first day I knew, I knew he was gonna do some cool stuff.”

One summer while Kaplan was in high school, his team decided to build a complex system they had seen other teams try on their robots. Kaplan said he worked through the Fourth of July weekend to make the project happen.

That summer, the team ran into some challenges trying to build this system, Wilson said.

“He never quit trying to find resources to make his project work, and eventually we actually made it work,” Wilson said.

When a time consuming project is finally operating, it’s super rewarding to see, Kaplan said.

Though Kaplan traded his team’s competitive robots for Firefly and NASA’s lunar lander, that feeling hasn’t changed.

“It's pretty surreal, especially if you step back, like, all right, I'm testing this system, but it's a system that's sitting on a lunar lander that's going to fly this year.”