Colorado Aerospace Firms Hold Key Roles in Artemis II Moon Mission

Two Colorado aerospace companies are central to NASA's Artemis II mission, which is scheduled to launch Wednesday from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The flight will carry four astronauts toward the moon, the first people to travel there in more than 50 years.

The Orion spacecraft that will carry the crew was designed and engineered at Lockheed Martin in Jefferson County. The upper stage of the launch vehicle that will send the capsule on its way was designed and built by United Launch Alliance, based in Centennial, in partnership with Boeing.

The crew consists of Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency. Among them are the first Black person, the first woman and the first non-American to fly on a lunar mission.

The astronauts will spend 10 days aboard Orion on a 685,000-mile journey around the moon. They are expected to pass about 4,700 miles beyond the moon's far side, and may travel farther from Earth than the distance record of 248,655 miles set by Apollo 13 in 1970.

Paul Benfield, Lockheed Martin's Artemis II mission manager, said preparations were going smoothly. "Everything is looking like its going to be a go. No issues in work on the rocket side. No issues in work on Orion," he said. The weather outlook remained favorable Tuesday. Benfield planned to watch the launch outside with the public before traveling to Houston to join engineering teams supporting the flight-control center.

Lockheed Martin has worked on the Artemis program for about 15 years and was the prime contractor for the spacecraft on Artemis I in 2022. That 25-day flight carried no crew and was the first step toward returning people to the lunar surface, a landing now planned for Artemis IV in 2028. A second Orion is already on the launchpad, and three more spacecraft are at Kennedy Space Center awaiting assembly. "Different components are being worked on around the country, including in Colorado, to contribute to those," Benfield said.

Artemis II is also the second Artemis mission for ULA, which supplied the launch system for Artemis I. A system for Artemis III is undergoing technical preparations at a Cape Canaveral facility. ULA's second stage sits atop NASA's Space Launch System core stage. NASA says the combination is among the most powerful rockets ever developed, producing 8.8 million pounds of thrust at liftoff to lift a vehicle weighing nearly 6 million pounds.

ULA said in a statement Tuesday that teams of engineers and specialists in Denver and Cape Canaveral will support the countdown and the flight of the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage-2. An "ascent team" will provide real-time in-flight analysis to NASA's Flight Operations team at Mission Control in Houston.

Orion on this flight has a full set of crew seats and complete displays and controls for the pilot and commander. Its accommodations include a toilet and a phone-booth-size bay for cleaning up. Although the spacecraft can fly itself, the crew will take manual control briefly. "We want to collect some data on how accurately the vehicle responds to the crew providing commands from the pilot and commander," Benfield said. The data will help prepare for rendezvous with lunar landers on future missions.

Lockheed spokesman Gary Napier called the mission "a major milestone for the corporation, for the United States and for the world." He acknowledged that it may not have drawn much public attention so far, but said he expects that to change once the launch, the 10-day flight and especially the splashdown take place.