When Artemis II roared off the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center Wednesday evening, it included parts developed in Western New York by Moog Incorporated.
The Elma-based aerospace and defense company has worked with the space program for many years. But as NASA returns to the moon for the first time since 1972, people within Moog are feeling excited about this next step in human space exploration.
Jim Steffan, Programs Director of Space Actuation Systems at Moog, says the emotions leading up to the launch Wednesday ranged from nervousness to excitement.
“It’s a proud moment,” he said. “We have a talented cross-functional team that's worked through the design and development, the build and the test of the hardware, from manufacturing technicians through engineering quality program management. It's really a team effort that we saw, the fruits of their labor (Wednesday) at the successful launch.”
Moog-made components are included in systems up and down the rocket. They include actuators which aided in the steering of the rocket. Steffan says think of them as pistons, moving back and forth, moving the engine’s nozzles.
“Around T-minus two and a half, as they're going through their checkouts before launch, you'll see that they gimbal those actuators. They'll actually move. There's two actuators per nozzle, and they'll move those nozzles just to make sure that everything's functioning properly,” he said. “And then right during launch, our actuators will push on those nozzles to point the rocket in the right direction.”
Additional components may be found in the Orion space capsule, aiding oxygen and environmental systems which Artemis II’s crew of four astronauts alive.
Steffan says there are additional components they hope are never used.
“It's called our Launch Abort System, LAS, and it's at the top of the rocket,” he said. “Our LAS hardware is up at the top. Basically in the event that there's an anomaly at launch, or even on the pad, that they need to jettison the astronauts away from the rocket… in a moment's notice, our hardware will actually steer that top of the vehicle away from the rocket, to steer the astronauts safely away.”
That system was not needed, bringing relief to NASA and Moog staff.
Milestone moments in U.S. space exploration, including Apollo, the Space Shuttle program, and planetary probes inspired many young people to pursue a career in the field. Steffan feels Artemis could do the same for today’s young people.
“Absolutely,” he replied. “Especially with social media that we have today, people are going to have access to information technology that they didn't have before, and to be able to see and witness firsthand the missions that we have. Getting back to the moon is going to generate, I think, lots of enthusiasm for folks, whether they're young adults or in their teens, that want to be part of it. I think it's going to be a growth in engineering and STEM fields, that people are going to want to jump on the bandwagon.”
