NASA’s Orion program supports more than 800 small businesses in almost every state across the country.
Orion is the nation’s new spacecraft designed to take humans to multiple deep space destinations. It will not only take humans to deep space and return them to Earth, but sustain the crew and keep them safe.
Let’s take a closer look at a few of the businesses that are helping to enable Orion:
Advanced Solutions, Inc. (ASI) is an aerospace engineering company in Colorado that has supported the program since the 2010 Pad Abort-1 test, which demonstrated the capabilities of Orion’s launch abort system. The company has supported the integration and testing of the crew module, the component of Orion that will protect astronauts during launch and reentry in addition to being where the crew will live and work while in space.
ASI has also supported ground data system design and implementation. Several ASI employees worked in console positions during both launch and mission operations. Others have provided important contributions during development and mission operations.
ASI has 36 full-time employees and 5 full-time subcontractors. The employees involved with Orion and NASA have helped make ASI more competitive in the market. They also bring back knowledge to ASI’s internal research and development, and help attract top-notch employees.
Alejo Engineering is located in California and has three employees. The company has supported the Orion program through the prime contractor, Lockheed Martin, and provided preliminary probabilistic risk assessment during the proposal phase. They helped create the reliability and maintainability plan. As a result of being involved with Orion, the company grew and went further into the aviation sector with skills and lessons learned from being part of the program. Alejo Engineering is classified as a small disadvantaged business and a woman-owned small business.
All Points Logistics, LLC has 230 employees of which about 25% support the Orion program. The company received the NASA 2011 Agency-Wide Small Business Subcontractor of the Year Award. They support Lockheed Martin and Orion in a range of disciplines that include systems engineering, design, development, integration and testing, navigation and control testing, and avionics, power and wiring. They are a service-disabled veteran-owned small business.
The workforce of All Points increased by 30% as a result of supporting the Orion program. Their program management capabilities have improved, and they have expanded to five different states across the nation. Being part of the Orion program has helped the company win the Lockheed Martin Civil Space contract, allowing them to support many other space programs including OSIRIS-REx, MAVEN, InSight and JUNO.
Arcata Associates, Inc. is a small disadvantaged business that has supported Orion since the beginning of the program in 2006. Having received numerous awards for being a small business prime contractor, small business and subcontractor, the 400-person company provides Orion with supply-chain, quality and subcontract data management services. Through their support of Lockheed Martin for the Orion program, Arcata has learned best practices in many areas which they incorporate into their company, allowing them to improve the support they provide to customers.
These are only a few examples that showcase the tremendous value which small businesses bring to the Orion program. Small businesses benefit as a result of the nation’s ongoing investment into space. Deep space exploration through Orion is not an isolated endeavour, but rather one that relies on the support by a huge variety of companies around the country.
Launching in 2018, Orion will be integrated with NASA’s new rocket, Space Launch System (SLS). When you watch Orion fly toward space, take a moment to think about the many hundreds of companies around the country that have supported the program. The continuation of the Orion program is critical not only to the many hundreds of small businesses that support it, but essential as we push the boundaries of human exploration into deep space.
Already paving the way before its first integrated launch with SLS, the Orion crew vehicle flew into space in 2014 for its exploration test flight. It traveled further than any human-rated spacecraft had in over 40 years.
Learn more about NASA’s Orion program at NASA.gov.