Discovering Space

The Moon, the Sun and the stars—and Mars and beyond.

If a robotic mission has traveled there, so has Lockheed Martin.

The spacecraft we design, build and operate have been a part of exploring every planet in our solar system. They have landed on Mars, executed tiny orbits around asteroids and flown past Pluto on to the Kuiper Belt, the farthest distance any space vehicle has ever gone.

Our systems provide the power and protection needed to navigate through cruise stage, maintain even the smallest, precise orbits, and withstand the challenges of entry, descent and landing (EDL). The instruments on our missions collect vital scientific samples and data and send them back to Earth. And on the ground, our mission support teams keep spacecraft flying and information flowing to scientists and engineers for analysis.

The experience and knowledge gathered from those robotic missions is not only providing us with valuable data about our solar system, they are also informing a key goal for deep space exploration-- sending humans to the moon and Mars in the not-so-distant future and providing the infrastructure for a new space economy.

Orbiters supply scientists with a wealth of data and discoveries about how our solar system was formed including our planetary neighbor, Mars. In 1996, Mars Global Surveyor launched to orbit around the polar regions of Mars, and contributed to a multitude of findings about the signs of past, persistent water. The orbiters operating today are providing even more data. In 2001, Mars Odyssey began analyzing the radiation environment on Mars to evaluate risks, while the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) searched for official water sources. Other missions like MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) gather information on the impact that Mars’ upper atmosphere might have on a manned spacecraft approaching the planet.

Orbiters also provide important communications relays for deep-space operations, including landers and rovers.

When InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) landed on Mars in 2018, it relied on data relays from MRO and Odyssey to transmit information back to Earth.

We have a long heritage with building orbiters. For example, the Lunar Prospector lived up to its name—uncovering the first evidence of water ice at the Moon’s poles in 1998.  Now spacecraft like MRO at Mars continue to drive human exploration by examining potential landing sites for future Mars missions, while others like MAVEN contribute with studies of the Martian atmosphere and provide relay support.

Our innovations for sample return missions help bring science back to Earth. NASA’s Stardust and Stardust-NExT missions in 1999, the first U.S. space mission designed solely for comet exploration, relied on Lockheed Martin to design, build, integrate and test, as well as control and operate, the spacecraft. We provided launch support and support for the capsule that returned comet dust to Earth. We took on the same tasks for Genesis, a 2001 mission that returned solar-wind samples.

The experience from those missions carried over to the OSIRIS-REx (2016) mission to the asteroid Bennu. The spacecraft will use a first-of-its-kind sample collection mechanism invented by Lockheed Martin especially for the mission’s unique challenges. TAGSAM, or Touch and Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism, will use its fully articulated “arm” and vacuum head to collect regolith from Bennu in 2020.

The Mission Support Area (MSA) in Denver, Colo., houses the people in the loop who keep these robotic explorers on the right path. The Mission Operations teams in the MSA currently have eight missions operating in space and will add Lucy when it launches on its journey to Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids in 2021. Capitalizing on the expertise of building the spacecraft, our team brings those lessons learned to spacecraft operations with the majority of the spacecraft outside Earth’s atmosphere – the only private company to provide this service.

Mission Ops teams are responsible for: 

• Supporting in-flight maneuvers, testing and special scientific research requests
• Monitoring data to analyze general spacecraft health and evaluate trends
• Receiving data from NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN) antennas
• Developing and validating commands to operate spacecraft
• Creating background sequences that allow spacecraft to transmit data back to Earth
• Redesigning mission capabilities to extend science collection  

Like the spacecraft they fly, Mission Ops teams constantly explore new territory. The OSIRIS-REx mission required unprecedented proximity operations when it reached the asteroid Bennu in late 2018. It’s the first time anyone has ever operated a spacecraft so close to a small celestial body and in a microgravity environment. That means the team must make frequent orbit adjustments—once or twice a week at times, compared to yearly for spacecraft in larger, more established orbits.