Artemis II Carries A Lot of Alabama Back to The Moon

"Fly me back BACK to the moon" could be the slogan for today's spectacular launch of NASA's Artemis II Manned Test Flight around the moon. For the first time in 53 years a crewed mission is headed to the moon. The last time was Apollo 17 on December 7, 1972.

The liftoff from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, FL was picture perfect as hundreds of thousands watch from Florida and an estimated 1 billion viewed the event on television and online.

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To Baby,Boomers, the launch brought to mind the first ever crewed U.S. mission to the moon on December 21, 1968. Like the Artemis II, Apollo 8 did not touch down on the lunar surface. The flight completed ten orbits of the moon and presented a reading from the Book of Genesis before returning to Earth.

The 5:35pm Tuscaloosa time liftoff hurled Astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian Jeremy Hansen into space for a slingshot around the moon in low orbit and back to earth.

Just like 53 years ago, Alabama is playing a critical role in the United States' return to lunar missions. The Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in Huntsville was the leader in the design, development and testing of the launch vehicle, just as it was with the Saturn V booster under the Werner Von Braun team in the Rocket City in the 1960s.

Today's launch was made successful by:

• Engineers and contractors in Huntsville who have been heavily involved in designing and producing parts of the Orion crew capsule Key contractors, including Teledyne Brown Engineering and United Launch Alliance based in Decatur produced key launch components.
• The RS-25 engines that powered the core stage of the liftoff were developed and tested at Marshall for the space shuttle program. Three of the four actually flew on shuttle missions in the 1980s.Some of the other shuttle parts actually date back to the first operational shuttle mission on Columbia.
• MSFC manages the Human Landing System program, which will eventually take astronauts back to the lunar surface and manages payloads.
• Marshall also serves as a main training facility for astronauts. It is the center for mission simulators and software.
• Both the University of Alabama and Auburn University were involved in the mission. UA partnered with NASA to collaborate on advanced in-space technology. AU has more than 200 graduates working at MSFC and for contractors. AU is also researching rocket plume-surface interactions and lunar dust impact on electronics.

So, what does all that mean to Alabama? Try an $8 billion dollar infusion into Alabama's economy. So, as Artemis II heads to the moon, it takes a lot of Alabama with it.