Governor Newsom welcomes NASA’s Artemis II crew back to Earth, touching down in the Golden State

The Golden State’s innovation ecosystem fuels the future:

• California made up 62% of all U.S. venture capital funding and 31.5% of all venture capital deals last year.
• The Golden State has the highest density in higher education to create a top talent pipeline, with one college or university for every 64,000 citizens.
• There are more engineers produced in California than any other state. 
• Technology Firms based in California gain four times the return on their investment compared to their global peers in the past two, three and five years. 

Across California Industry leaders have helped make this mission a reality, providing advanced manufacturing, software development, safety and security services and specialized components such as valves, harnesses, clamps, batteries and cables. 

More than 500 California Companies contributed to NASA’s Artemis II, select companies include:

• Aerojet Rocketdyne, an L3Harris Technologies company (Canoga Park) is the lead engines contractor for the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, upgrading and testing the 16 RS-25 engines to power the flight.
• AMRO Karman Space and Defense (South El Monte) provides machining and welding services for key Artemis components.
• Beranek, LLC Precision Machining (Torrance) manufactures critical components for the SLS.
• Boeing (Los Angeles County) serves as a lead contractor for the SLS core stage, the backbone of Artemis.
• Kirkhill, Inc. (Santa Fe Springs) produces erosion-resistant insulation applied to critical areas along the SLS to protect hardware from weather and extreme temperatures during launch and flight.
• LeFiell Manufacturing Company (Brea) supplies miles of metallic tubing for the SLS Block 1 rocket.
• Lockheed Martin (Los Angeles County) serves as the prime contractor for the NASA Orion spacecraft, responsible for designing, building and testing the capsule that will carry the four astronauts.
• Northrop Grumman (Los Angeles County) provides the twin solid rocket boosters that help power the SLS and key propulsion for Orion’s launch abort system, supporting both mission performance and crew safety.
• Precision Aerospace (Rancho Cucamonga) chemically mills precision RS-25 engine components, including ultra-thin nozzle jackets.
• Precision Tube Bending (Santa Fe Springs) manufactures custom tubing for SLS core stage systems and RS-25 engines.
• Tecma (Sacramento) creates precision parts for inclusion in the rocket’s engine, ignition area and more.
• SpaceX (Hawthorne) is a major Artemis commercial partner, developing the human landing system for future lunar surface missions under NASA’s broader Artemis campaign.
• VACCO Industries (El Monte) produces specialty valves pre-valves and advanced cryogenic fluid control systems for SLS propellant tanks.
• Votaw Precision Technologies (Santa Fe Springs) manufactures large metal parts from SLS flight hardware.

California’s role in powering human spaceflight stretches back decades. The Saturn V rocket that carried Apollo astronauts to the moon was built almost entirely in California and the original Apollo spacecraft itself was manufactured across the state. The Space Shuttle fleet was assembled in Palmdale, the first U.S. space station, Skylab, was built in Huntington Beach, and the RS-25 engine – originally developed for the Shuttle and now powering the Space Launch System for Artemis II – has been designed and manufactured in the San Fernando Valley since the 1970s.

As of late 2024, California is the top state in the country for:

• NASA spending: NASA procurement spending at $5.8 billion, accounting for 25% of NASA’s total procurement nationwide and resulting in $18.6 billion in economic output for California.
• NASA-supported R&D: California’s share of NASA procurement in R&D services sector is 67%, representing 19% of NASA-supported jobs in the state.
• NASA Employment Impact: Each NASA job in California supports an additional 35.7 jobs across the state, resulting in a total employment impact of 66,208 jobs.

Under Governor Newsom’s California Jobs First Blueprint, Aerospace & Defense is an “accelerate” sector and is underpinned by a highly skilled and experienced workforce, world-class infrastructure and strong public-private investment, contributing an estimated $35 billion annually to California’s gross domestic product (GDP).