To the Moon and Back: How Unison Teams Helped Power NASA’s Historic Artemis II Mission

Brendon Mee watched the April 1 launch of NASA's Artemis II, the first crewed mission near the moon since 1972, from a viewing spot about eight miles from Kennedy Space Center. That may not seem like a front-row seat, but when you're witnessing the most powerful rocket in history blasting off with more than 8 million pounds of thrust, it's extremely close - and incredibly brilliant.

"The most impressive thing for me was the brightness of the exhaust plume," says Mee. "It doesn't show up in pictures or video, but you have to squint your eyes to look at it." Because sound travels slower than light, he adds, "it took about a minute before we heard and felt [the power] of the engines and solid rocket boosters. It was thrilling."

Mee is a principal engineer at Unison, a GE Aerospace company where engineers designed and built ignitions systems for the core- and upper-stage rockets that sent Artemis II into space. Working closely with NASA and partners like L3Harris Technologies, he and Unison teams in Jacksonville, Florida, and Norwich, New York, had spent years preparing for this moment.

Lucas Miller, the lead program management specialist at Unison for the Artemis II program, couldn't attend the launch, but he felt its significance while watching the television coverage. "We manufactured those parts here in Norwich and had the opportunity to see them being applied at the Kennedy Space Center," he says. "It was amazing to see the full product life cycle like that - and obviously the launch was a tremendous success."

Sparking the Flame

Unison's ignition components first came into play just seconds before liftoff, when the augmented spark igniters (ASI) system completed a rapid series of steps to light the core-stage rocket's four RS-25 engines, made by Unison partner L3Harris Technologies. The RS-25s, assisted by two solid rocket boosters, lifted the 5.75-million-pound "stack" - the Space Launch System rocket and Orion space capsule - off the launchpad and into space.

Around eight minutes into the flight, some 100 miles above Earth, the main engines shut down and the core-stage rocket dropped away. Soon after, Unison's Dual Direct Spark Ignition (DDSI) system lit the RL10 engine (also made by L3Harris) that powered the upper-stage rocket. The RL10 engine functions in stages, known as the perigee and apogee, which positioned the Orion spacecraft into a temporary "parking" orbit around Earth, traveling at roughly 17,500 miles per hour. It fired up again about an hour later to send Orion and its crew on a trajectory toward the moon.

"It's mission critical in both stages," says Miller. "Especially within that first few minutes after launch, there's a lot that must happen perfectly. If something goes wrong, it could be catastrophic."

Yet as he watched the launch countdown, Miller felt very little anxiety. "I had full confidence in our components, that they would operate as intended," he says. "We have a very collaborative, very open relationship with L3Harris. We're transparent with our quality and our manufacturing - and we make sure everyone is on the same page 24/7, 365."

Testing, Testing … and More Testing

Ignition components, like every part used in the Artemis II mission, must be "space-rated" - certified to function in the demanding environments of launch and while speeding through the cosmos. They need to hold up under extreme mechanical stress and engine temperatures that range from cryogenic levels up to hundreds of degrees Fahrenheit, for example, and to perform optimally in the vacuum of space.

That's why every component is tested under space conditions, first at Unison, again after engine assembly by L3Harris Technologies, and later at NASA. "In Norwich, we put our products in what is basically a big vacuum jar, then suck out all the air, and ensure the products are functioning correctly," Miller explains. "They get vibration testing, they get put through additional thermal cycles, electrical testing - the pedigree and quality that goes behind this, and the engineering, is a lot. And it's all to make sure we never see a failure."

Long before these final testing stages, of course, engineers like Mee have been working to perfect the component designs. Mee was part of the 2012 team that designed the RL10's current ignition configuration. He's been working on the RS-25 since 2016, when Unison was contracted to produce its ignition system for use in NASA's Space Launch System and deep space exploration. Unison had worked on earlier versions of the RS-25, which served as the main engine for the U.S. Space Shuttle program.

When the Orion space capsule splashed down in the Pacific on April 10, its four-person crew had traveled to a point beyond the moon that is 252,756 miles from Earth, farther than any humans before them. Their work laid the ground for the Artemis III mission, planned for 2027. And they'd explored space safely thanks to countless teams working behind the scenes to support the mission. (Including teams at GE Aerospace's engine production facility in Lynn, Massachusetts, who built the T700 engines that powered the Seahawk helicopters the U.S. Navy used to pluck the crew from the ocean.)

Mee felt the power of that connection last year, when he met astronauts Christina Koch (NASA) and Jeremy Hansen (Canadian Space Agency) at a conference for Artemis II suppliers in Washington, D.C. "It's really cool to go back and look at the pictures I got with them," he says. "These were the people who would be going around the moon approximately a year later, and I got to tell them about what I did, the role I was playing in the mission."

It's a role Mee - and Miller - take seriously, and that commitment can be seen in their work. As the next era of space travel literally takes off before their eyes, they're thrilled that Unison is in the thick of it. "We're the best at what we do in the industry," Miller says. "That's why customers keep coming back to us."