REDMOND, Wash. — NASA’s Artemis campaign is a bold series of missions to take humans back to the moon… and those astronauts will get there thanks to help from rocket engines made right here in Washington!
“If we didn’t make these engines, then there wouldn’t be any sort of orbital maneuvering system, there wouldn’t be a way for the crew module to come back to Earth safely. It’s really important to us that we make engines that we know are going to work well and work right,” said Kathryn Luczek, L3Harris Orion Deputy Program Manager.
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We are told each of the first three Artemis missions uses 32 rocket engines produced at the L3Harris facility in Redmond.
NASA representatives paid a visit this week.
“There is so much to do on the moon. We’re going there for science. There are scientific discoveries to be made. The Apollo missions only went to the equatorial regions. Imagine if you visited earth, but only went to the equator. There is so much more to see on the moon,” said NASA astronaut Woody Hoburg.
The next mission, planned for no later than April of next year, will take humans around the moon for the first time since 1972.
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“There’s a lot of harsh realities associated with being in space that you have to deal with, radiation being one of them, and you are multiple days away from Earth. Unlike in low Earth orbit, you have to bring systems in terms of redundancy and consumables with you,” said Howard Hu, Orion Program Manager.
The third mission will land astronauts on the lunar surface, bringing NASA closer to its long-term goals.
“There is a lot of scientific discovery to do. We want to set up moon bases, do all the things,” said Hoburg.
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