REDMOND — Standing outside a Redmond office park, astronaut Warren “Woody” Hoburg holds a basketball to signify planet Earth.
He holds a tennis ball in his other hand to represent the moon and passes both spheres to two others standing on the podium. Then he unravels a tape measure 24 feet, roughly the distance from the three-point line to the basketball hoop, separating his two assistants.
The demonstration sends the volunteer holding the tennis ball off the podium and into the grass, signifying just how far apart the two celestial bodies are.
Hoburg knows the demonstration is rudimentary. He is putting on the display for people who work in the aerospace industry and are already familiar with these numbers, he jokes.
But he hopes to make a point, providing a clear visual of just how big of a deal NASA’s upcoming Artemis II mission could be. An Orion spacecraft carrying four astronauts is set to lift off early next year to circle the moon, part of NASA’s multistage program to eventually reach Mars. If all goes well, Artemis II will be the penultimate step before returning the U.S. to the lunar surface.
The display is part of Hoburg’s thank you message to employees at the Redmond office of defense contractor L3Harris, who built some of the hardware that will make NASA’s trip to the moon possible.
Those astronauts preparing to launch to space are “depending on you and they know they can count on you,” Hoburg said Monday. “Thank you for all the hard work you are doing to make this amazing adventure possible.”
L3Harris is one of thousands of companies, including dozens in Washington, working with NASA to construct the rocket, spacecraft and supporting infrastructure for Artemis II. L3Harris is building the engine and propulsion systems that will power the spacecraft and help it navigate the cosmic skies.
With companies like L3Harris building those systems in Redmond, the state is “at the forefront of aerospace innovation,” said U.S. Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Medina. Washington has a $4.6 billion space economy, creating 13,000 jobs, according to a 2022 study from the Puget Sound Regional Council.
NASA’s Artemis program “wouldn’t be possible without our region’s innovators and skilled workers who are propelling ambitious visions of the next chapter of human spaceflight,” said DelBene, whose district includes the Redmond L3Harris plant.
The Artemis program, which has been in the works for more than a decade and has an estimated cost of $93 billion through 2025, is a multistage endeavor that aims to study the moon and build the foundation for future missions to Mars.
If the moon is 24 feet from the Earth in Hoburg’s demonstration, Mars would be 3,432 feet away, pushing the demonstrators far from the employee gathering, Hoburg joked Monday.
After an uncrewed test flight in 2022, NASA has set a launch date for the second Artemis mission of April 2026, two years behind its original schedule. That mission will send four astronauts to circle the moon and return.
The third phase, targeted for mid-2027, will land two astronauts on the moon, putting the first humans on the lunar surface since the Apollo missions more than 50 years ago.
As the April launch date for Artemis II inches closer, NASA representatives, including Hoburg, have started their rounds of thank-yous, visiting local suppliers helping to make the moon shot a reality.
The entire apparatus, from the Boeing-built rocket to the crew capsule and supporting ground infrastructure, involves 3,000 commercial companies across 50 states, according to NASA’s Keegan Jackson, the self-described “rocket guy.”
“We know just how mission critical what you do is,” Jackson, the resident manager for NASA’s Space Launch System Liquid Engine Office, told L3Harris employees Monday.
“I hope when you go home and you talk to your friends and neighbors, you tell them that you’re helping to establish a sustained lunar presence and laying the groundwork for going on to Mars,” Jackson said.
In Washington, 40 companies had a hand in the Artemis II mission, including two that are working on multiple programs, according to a 2024 count from U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash.
Cantwell said in a statement that Washington’s aerospace workforce is “absolutely essential to our astronauts return to the Moon and to the future exploration of Mars and beyond.”
Boeing, which hosted the NASA officials at the Museum of Flight on Wednesday, built the rocket that will send the astronauts to space, known as the Space Launch System. But it is not working on the Artemis program in its Washington facilities.
Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ Kent-based rocket company, is not involved in the Artemis II mission but does have contracts for later stages of the program.
L3Harris, which is headquartered in Florida and acquired aerospace contractor Aerojet Rocketdyne and its Redmond facility in 2023, has a sprawling mandate for the Artemis II mission.
It’s responsible for the main engine that will power the Orion spacecraft headed to the Moon, as well as a motor that will allow the crew capsule to separate from the rocket in case of an emergency and a control system that helps the crew prepare to reenter Earth’s atmosphere and splash down in the Pacific Ocean.
An L3Harris subsidiary, Arde, is building nitrogen and oxygen tanks to create a breathable atmosphere for astronauts and pressure vessels to store helium that will help the Orion capsule stay upright after its watery landing.
In Redmond, L3Harris is building the spacecraft’s backup engines.
Those eight engines — cylindrical cones fastened on the back of the service module — help the Orion capsule maintain its trajectory and position in space.
L3Harris builds the engines from raw materials and sees them through to final inspections, before they are sent off to be integrated into the final product, said Kathryn Luczek, the Orion deputy program manager at L3Harris.
Because the engines need to be integrated early on, they are built years ahead of launch, Luczek said. Her team has built the backup engines through the Artemis V mission, and has contracts through to Artemis VIII.
The upcoming launch of Artemis II, with astronauts strapped in to circle the moon, is a “historic milestone,” Luczek said.
“There’s a lot at stake. You have to have a lot of pride in your work,” she said, referring to the fact that the success of the mission and the astronauts’ safety hinges on the work her team does in Redmond.
Asked how she handles that pressure, she said, “One mission at a time.”
Delivering the “good stuff”
Even as NASA and suppliers celebrate the upcoming launch of Artemis II, some of the details of the program could change.
In his 2026 budget request, President Donald Trump said he will phase out the “grossly expensive and delayed” Space Launch System rocket and Orion capsule after three flights.
The budget includes funding for a new program to replace the rocket and space capsule with “more cost-effective commercial systems” to “support more ambitious subsequent lunar missions.”
The budget request would also end production of Gateway, a small lunar space station designed to support Space Launch System and Orion missions.
The companies supplying materials for Artemis declined to comment on Trump’s budget but the NASA executives who visited Washington said the goal of the program remains the same.
“In the near term, the administration has been very clear. We need to go. … We need to stimulate American innovation across the board,” Amit Kshatriya, the deputy associate administrator for NASA’s Moon to Mars program, said during Monday’s visit to L3Harris. “We want to change the game in terms of what it means to be in space.”
Companies like L3Harris, the hardware they are building and the generations of engineers they are training are able to adapt, even if the “mission needs” change, Kshatriya said. “A shop like this has the DNA that we need to keep going.”
He wore a blue ribbon pinned to his lapel in honor of astronaut Jim Lovell, who died this month. Lovell was a part of the Apollo 8 mission, the first human mission to the moon, and commander of Apollo 13, where he successfully avoided a near-disaster after an explosion on board.
Kshatriya said the Artemis missions can “bring the country together” in the same way the Apollo missions did 50 years ago.
He is optimistic Artemis II will launch by April because he can “see it in the crew’s faces,” he said Monday.
“We understand these machines better than anything we’ve built before,” Kshatriya said. “What we don’t do is take the time to step back and think about what could go wrong. We’re starting to see that.”
On L3Harris’ factory floor in Redmond, Hamber Pablo said he is excited to finally “put a face to the vehicle.”
Pablo has been assembling engines for the Artemis program since its first mission. When the first rocket took off in 2022, he felt nostalgic, remembering a “proud sense of accomplishment and fond memories,” he said in an interview this week.
Now, he is excited about what Artemis II means for space exploration.
“A lot of pride in the work is really what gets you to keep going,” he said. “We’re all on the same team trying to achieve the same goal. That’s really it for me.”
Amid all the excitement, Pablo said his job remains the same: “Continue to not mess up. Get good stuff out” the door.