Last week, we looked into a few of the small businesses that are essential in the next steps of human space exploration. There are more than 800 overall – these businesses are making critical contributions toward NASA’s Orion crew vehicle that will take humans to a variety of deep space destinations.
The Orion capsule.
Coalition member ASRC Federal Space and Defense employs most of the Orion technicians that work in Florida. It’s a small disadvantaged business with 811 employees that also supports the Orion prime contractor, Lockheed Martin. Among the many personnel and services provided by the company are test engineers, subject matter experts for ground and flight operations, and the fabrication of flight wire harnesses and thermal blankets. Through the company’s work with NASA’s Orion program, Lockheed Martin has used ASRC Federal Space and Defense on other contracts around the country.
ATA Engineering, Inc. has supported the Orion program since the beginning. The woman-owned small business of 117 individuals has adapted and grown their support of Orion as the program evolved. They provide engineering support that includes modal and stress analysis as well as finite element model development and integration. They support several teams within the program. By being involved in the program, engineers from ATA have created new methods to assess the Orion spacecraft and its exploration capabilities.
Bally Ribbon Mills is a company with nearly 300 employees that developed heatshield compression pads for Orion with NASA engineers. The compression pads serve both a mechanical function and thermal protection at different points in Orion’s flight. The company is a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II Company. As a result of working with NASA and Orion, the company has learned a lot about the research, development and production of cutting-edge composite parts which has helped them better serve all of their customers.
These are just a few examples of the valuable cross-benefits received from the involvement of small businesses with NASA’s Orion program and how both advance as a result of their intersection on the path to enabling deep space human exploration.
Orion will launch in 2018 on top of NASA’s new rocket, Space Launch System (SLS), on an unmanned mission thousands of miles beyond the moon. Future mission will carry humans to multiple deep space destinations.
Learn more about Orion at NASA.gov.