NEW SPACE RACE
Connecticut aerospace companies prepare to help get NASA to moon, Mars
HARTFORD – NASA and U.S. military and space allies pitched Monday for business from more than 200 representatives of aerospace companies attending a Hartford meeting in search of potential contracts for a sooner-than-expected trip to the moon.
Vice President Mike Pence in March urged a 2024 return to the moon, 55 years after the historic first landing by Apollo 11 and four years earlier than planned. NASA is now looking to beef up its supply chain of manufacturers in anticipation of the nearly 500,000-mile round trip and construction of a base on the lunar surface in anticipation of a trip to Mars.
The previous 2028 date was going to require “not necessarily all hands on deck, but a tremendous amount of focus by the supply chain,” Dan Burbank, a former astronaut and senior technical fellow at Collins Aerospace, a unit of United Technologies Corp., said at the International Space Summit.
The intent of a return to the moon, this time not only by a man, but also a first-ever
trek by a woman, is to “extend human presence there to our nearest solar system neighbor,” he said.
“It is absolutely critical for us to be able to learn how to do those things before we send a crew on a three-and-a-half year journey to Mars,” Burbank said. “If anything we need an even more, rich supply base.”
To meet the shorter schedule, the supply chain should reach into schools to find students who will “join us in this great effort,” Burbank said.
NASA has selected 11 companies to conduct studies and produce prototypes of a human lander for its Artemis lunar exploration program to bring humans to the Moon’s south pole by 2024 and establish missions by 2028.
For many Connecticut aviation and aerospace businesses, the shift to space is a logical next step. Propulsion systems, air filtering equipment, avionics and countless other components are already being manufactured by state businesses.
Collins Aerospace, for example, is the successor company to UTC Aerospace Systems, which replaced Hamilton Sundstrand, the manufacturer of numerous space travel components, including the space suit used by astronauts to replicate Earth’s environment in the void of outer space.
GKN Aerospace, an Irving, Texas-based company with sites in Cromwell, Manchester, Newington and Wallingford, is a major supplier to another UTC business, jet engine maker Pratt & Whitney, said Jon Sonju, director of government affairs at GKN.
“GKN is always looking for a key supply base,” he said.
In addition, the gathering presented businesses with opportunities to forge relationships with other firms, Sonju said.
Overseas companies were represented, reflecting the international consortium leading the space initiative. The so-called Five Eyes, an intelligence alliance of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States, is working together on space travel and sent representatives to the conference.
“People come here from everywhere and understand there’s a place for us to play,” said Vinesh Karan, commercial director at A.W. Bell, a Melbourne, Australia, manufacturer of grinding and other machines.
Marta Mager, minister counselor of the New Zealand Space Agency, said international cooperation is particularly important because space is becoming congested with rising launch competition by governments and businesses and efforts to weaponize space.
U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd, said rising NASA funding has bipartisan backing, beginning with President Barack Obama and continuing in the administration of President Donald Trump. Federal spending is rising, to $22.3 billion in fiscal year 2020 from $21.5 billion the previous year and $20.7 billion in 2018, according to his Washington office.
Areas of cooperation among the five nations could include not just space travel, but also a Space Force that Trump last year called for in a directive to the Pentagon, Courtney said.
“There’s so much activity that didn’t exist five or six years ago,” he said.
Joint efforts present an opportunity to discuss ways to collaborate and integrate “undertakings that almost defy imaginations,” Courtney said.
Stephen Singer can be reached at ssinger@courant.com.
“It is absolutely critical for us to be able to learn how to do those things before we send a crew on a three-and-a-half year journey to Mars. If anything we need an even more, rich supply base.”
— Dan Burbank, senior technical fellow at Collins Aerospace