Posts by Tom Roeder
Artemis II Sets Distance Record and Names Craters During Science Survey
Astronauts aboard Artemis II became the first humans to fly more than 250,000 miles from Earth just before noon on Monday as their Orion crew capsule passed the Moon on a figure-8 flight back to Earth, where they are expected to splash down off the California coast on Friday. Artemis II surpassed Apollo 13’s record…
Read MoreVeteran Lockheed Martin Engineer Driving Artemis Beyond Apollo’s Success
Blaine Brown has worked 40 years for Lockheed Martin and spent half his career on the Orion spacecraft. He remains as enthusiastic about human spaceflight as he was in the 1980s. “The pay is good, but there are a lot of easier jobs you could have and make money,” said Brown, who joined the Orion project at its earliest stage in 2005. “The inspiration…
Read MoreArtemis Booster Expert Keeps NASA’s Solid Rocket Boosters Flight-Ready
For 37 years, Steve Nielson has been the man in the middle, joining sections of Northrop Grumman solid rocket boosters, first for the space shuttle and now for Artemis. He’s one of the last people left on the planet with an encyclopedic understanding of the seals, which hold back millions of pounds of thrust per booster. “There are only…
Read More‘Throttle Up’ Takes on New Meaning for L3Harris Engineer Supporting NASA’s Artemis Missions
From the Garage to the Moon A couple of decades ago, Mark Aldaba was working on machines that only left the surface of Earth when something went horribly wrong. Those custom motorcycles and hot rods couldn’t hold a candle to the kind of horsepower he deals with now. One benefit from his youth spent on wheels, he said: “It gave me the start…
Read MoreHard Work and Talent Lead to Dream Job at Boeing
Boeing SLS engineer career Amanda Gertjejansen went to college with a single goal: Make more than her mother — enough to put poverty in the past. Now she’s on a rocket ride, managing a Boeing integrated product team overseeing the Space Launch System (SLS) core stage. Amanda Gertjejansen Boeing At Louisiana State University, Gertjejansen studied…
Read MoreArtemis II’s Slow Crawl to the Moon: Inside the 8-Hour Journey to Launch
Update: Amentum’s Breanne Rohloff and her big rig got an extra workout Feb. 25, when NASA engineers decided to roll the Artemis II back to the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center to diagnose a helium flow issue in the launch vehicle’s upper stage. She will get the long drive back on the crawler…
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