Lockheed Martin’s Colorado operations in the last year saw the completion of a spacecraft that will be launched to an asteroid near Jupiter, the success of its “aeroshell” that protected a NASA Mars rover as it landed on the red planet, and its Osiris-REx spacecraft grab some space dirt from an asteroid 200 million miles away.
“All of that is coming out of this campus,” said Richard Ambrose, executive vice president of Lockheed’s space division, of the company’s Waterton campus southwest of Denver’s suburbs. “It’s important to the local economy.”
It’s there about 6,000 employees of the space division work to design, test and build spacecraft integral to NASA’s future missions to the moon, Mars and long-range space exploration. There are about 9,000 space division employees, who work from locations in Boulder, the south metro Denver area and down to Colorado Springs. Lockheed has about 11,000 employees statewide.
The campus also houses the $128-million, 40,000-square-foot GPS III processing facility, where engineers will build up to 32 GPS III satellites for U.S. Space Force. It’s estimated there are more than 4 billion GPS users worldwide.
“This technology can be used for commercial, civil and defense applications,” Ambrose said.
Lockheed’s Waterton campus also houses the Space Operations Simulation Center, a “ultra-stable test environment for precision instruments and accurate navigation systems used in space vehicles.”
“It’s the most sophisticated facility on the planet,” he said.
Lockheed officials are looking forward to the Space Symposium returning to Colorado Springs Aug. 23-26.
“We enjoy coming together to have debates around space,” Ambrose said. “That’s the core tradition. It’s a safe place for government, academic and industry representatives to discuss the challenges. Over time, its gotten a strong international flavor as well.”
As opposed traveling around the country for meetings, they enjoy the efficiency of having all those representatives nearby.
“We joke it’s like speed dating – we have like 15 meetings scheduled in two days,” he said. “Plus, as one of the largest space companies, we feel an obligation to help move the space industry forward by helping small companies and students.”
“Capturing the hearts and minds of hearts and minds of young kids by bringing them understanding about the science is really important to us,” Ambrose said.
In March, NASA’s Perseverance Rover successfully landed on Mars protected by the Lockheed-built aeroshell. It’s the 10th one the company has produced for NASA. It carried rover safely through the Martian atmosphere at speeds of 12,500 mph and temperatures as high as 2,370 degrees.
Next on the horizon for Lockheed’s Colorado operations: teaming up with General Motors to build NASA’s next-generation lunar vehicle. Developing the vehicle is part of NASA’s Artemis program, which hopes to land female and people of color astronauts on the moon. The program challenged the aerospace industry to design a lunar terrain vehicle to carry astronauts farther than the 4.7 miles previous rovers have traveled.
And the team is anxiously awaiting the return of Osiris-REx — short for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer. It left Earth on Sept. 8, 2016, aboard Centennial-based United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket. It “kissed” the Bennu asteroid in October to collect carbon-rich space dirt (regolith). It’s the third mission in NASA’s New Frontiers program.
It’s scheduled to bring the regolith sample back to Earth in September 2023.
The spacecraft destined for the Trojan asteroid near Jupiter, named Lucy, could launch after Oct. 16, also on a ULA Atlas V rocket.
“We’re excited about getting Lucy launched,” Ambrose said.
This content was originally published here.
