On April 10, people gathered across the globe to breathlessly watch the NASA astronauts of the Artemis II mission splash down off the coast of San Diego. At the far end of their 10-day journey around the moon and back, they were almost 253,000 miles from Earth - the farthest distance yet humankind has traveled into space. For scientists who were a part of the historic undertaking, the sheer odds of the situation made its precise execution even more astonishing.
“Imagine dumping out a box of 10,000 Legos, and every single one of them landed perfectly in configuration in one go," Justin McKennon told WAMC. "That's what launching to the moon is.”
McKennon is chief technology officer of Electro Magnetic Applications, or EMA. The Denver-based company opened a satellite lab in the Berkshire Innovation Center in 2019. Back then, McKennon was the only staffer. EMA’s success has made Pittsfield an unlikely but burgeoning space hub, bringing in applicants from across the U.S. eager to work in the facility.
“We operate the most flexible space radiation lab in the US here in Pittsfield, and that really gave us a unique opportunity to take work that would typically go to Huntsville, Alabama, or the Cape Canaveral area, or the West Coast, and really bring it here to Pittsfield and do that, which we're really proud of,” said McKennon.
One of those transplants is Justin Christensen of Utah, who was doing quantum atomic physics at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico before coming to EMA in Pittsfield.
“I love how green it is here. It's way wetter here. I've had to figure out how to keep my house from rotting," he laughed. "It's not an issue out there.”
He says EMA allows him to unpack big questions about humanity’s next major steps into life in space - exactly the kind of work he wanted to do since studying spacecraft charging research at Utah State University.
“We're getting ready to do studies on these space suit, lunar interactions, and just trying to figure out how to answer questions like what static will build up when you're walking around on the moon, and how interactions with the space plasma and all of that are going to affect somebody that's out walking around on the moon,” Christensen told WAMC.
Christensen’s colleague Robert Smith was born and raised in Idaho, and also studied at Utah State. Before EMA, he worked on aircraft at Hill Air Force Base in Utah. The idea of using his propensity for hands-on work for the cosmic goals of the Artemis program is nothing short of a dream come true.
“Only until probably this past year and a half did I really kind of consider, oh, I'm doing something that a lot of kids would be like, that's their goal, is to work on something to go to the moon," said Smith. "I'm still trying to come to grips with that- The work that we're doing right now is actually world history.”
As McKennon explains, EMA’s space on the program goes back almost 20 years to 2007.
“We were one of the first subcontracts that Lockheed Martin gave out on the Orion Program. So, the Orion space capsule is what the astronauts were physically in that was part of the launch vehicle there. That's what they soared around the moon in there.”
The company was tasked with understanding how the sensors in the capsule would communicate with each other, NASA down on Earth, and every other entity involved in Artemis.
“Think of, if you and I are talking back and forth here, and there's 12 other people talking louder than us, it would be a little bit hard for us to hear," said McKennon. "We might miss some information. That's what happens on all electronic platforms when you have a bunch of systems interoperating there. So, we had to make sure that we could hear each other clearly, each of the systems could do their job.”
EMA was allowed access to the Orion spacecraft itself, testing electromagnetic compatibility and digging into the guts of the vehicle that would finally - years later - take a fully crewed flight to the moon for the first time in over 50 years. When McKennon watched the Artemis II astronauts safely splash down, he knew exactly how much work and how many hands went into the success.
“So, it was really kind of a culminating moment to just- I'm like crying watching it with my kids," he said. "First launch of my lifetime really being able to see it as an adult, for sure.”
EMA’s work on future Artemis missions will consider the actual dark side of the moon, its unexplored southern pole and the many questions it poses to scientists, including how to safely charge equipment in the alien environment.
“On earth, we can really understand and predict physics really well," said McKennon. "It's a very different variety because of the lack of magnetic field and atmosphere in space. So, in the south pole of the moon, you can be in the dark or in the sun, and it's just lights on or lights off, right? No, there's massive temperature swings when you're in the light or not out there. Materials behave wildly different.”
For now, with the victorious return of Artemis II behind them, the scientists of EMA are already looking ahead at the next groundbreaking opportunities for humanity in space. Currently set for early 2028, Artemis IV will put astronauts on the moon for the first time since 1972.
“That mission taught us that we don't know what we don't know," McKennon told WAMC. "We've confirmed that there's more stuff we need to learn, and the viability of getting humans on the Moon really isn't that far."
