04/01/2026
All Eyes on the Skies -- Artemis II will send four astronauts on a roughly 10-day mission around the Moon to test Orion, NASA's Space Launch System rocket and mission operations. Thank you, Colorado Aerospace Engineers!
· Lockheed Martin has based Orion — Artemis' spacecraft system and crew capsule in CO since early 2000s; Artemis II supports more than 600 Colorado employees and 400-plus in-state suppliers — about half of them small businesses. Those firms built everything from high-tech avionics to mission-critical hardware such as brackets.
· Boulder's BAE Systems developed the phased array antenna, a critical communications system integrated into the Orion spacecraft.
· Longmont's Honeybee Robotics (a subsidiary of Blue Origin) supplied the mechanism that opens the craft's side hatch.
By the numbers:
· CO ranks No. 1 nationally in per capita aerospace employment.
· More than 2,000 aerospace companies operate in the state.
Colorado companies are playing an outsize role in this week's Artemis II mission.