If you had more than 800 highly-skilled small businesses working together toward a common goal, what out-of-this-world endeavor could you imagine striving toward together?
How about enabling humans to travel to deep space, not just to one location but multiple destinations, and return them safely to Earth?
All of this is happening right now – NASA’s Orion vehicle is in development to take humans to deep space destinations and bring them back home to Earth.
let’s check out two more businesses that are making essential contributions to the Orion program:
A veteran-owned small business, EaglePicher Technologies, LCC, Yardney Division has been supporting the Orion program since its beginning. With 120 staff members in the division’s facility located in Rhode Island, they designed, developed and assembled state-of-the-art lithium ion cells and batteries for Orion. These flew and performed without a flaw on Orion’s test flight in December 2014 during which the capsule traveled further into space than any human-rated spacecraft had in over 40 years and returned to Earth.
The company is manufacturing cells and batteries for Orion’s first integrated flight with NASA’s new rocket, Space Launch System, known as Exploration Mission-1.
Where does the main electrical energy for Orion come from? Four Yardney batteries, which are customized for the job. The batteries can be recharged using solar panels.
Yardney has supplied batteries for the extreme conditions of space since NASA’s Apollo Program. The company has powered spacesuits, rocket launchers, landers and rovers. The products of the Yardney Division are “space-qualified” and allow them to use their products in several other challenging environments.
Another company, Fiber Materials, Inc. (FMI), is also a veteran-owned small business that supports Orion. With around 150 employees across their two locations in Maine, the company manufactures three parts for the Attitude Control Motor, part of the Launch Abort System for Orion. The Launch Abort System, or LAS, will sit on top of the crew vehicle and will pull the spacecraft away from a rocket in the event of a failure.
The components made by FMI for Orion use a special carbon fiber-reinforced ceramic matrix composite. This material is lightweight, has high-strength, and is more thermally stable than exotic metals. FMI has installed manufacturing equipment to support Orion through ceramic processing and component machining.
The sky is anything but the limit for hundreds of small businesses across the country – they are working together to create something extraordinary that will take humans into deep space and return them safely to Earth.
Small businesses – but there’s nothing small about what they’re enabling.
Learn more about Orion at NASA.gov.