CT Company's Tech Helps Artemis II Crew Survive Reentry

Simsbury isn’t exactly where you’d expect to find a company whose work will determine whether four astronauts survive reentry. But that’s exactly the situation Ensign-Bickford faced Friday evening, when the Artemis II crew module separated from its service module somewhere above the Pacific and began its final plunge toward Earth.

The separation had to work. No second chances, no do-overs.

Ensign-Bickford makes engineered explosive systems, and the company built the pyrotechnic device that fires at the precise moment the Orion capsule needs to sever from its service module, just before the spacecraft hits the upper atmosphere. Get the timing wrong, or have the system fail entirely, and the crew module can’t orient itself correctly for reentry. The Artemis II mission, which sent astronauts on a record-setting loop around the moon, came down to a piece of hardware built in central Connecticut.

“Sometimes in rocket launches, an explosive event is actually the most efficient way to make something happen. And that’s because once an explosive event happens, it’s very quick,” said Allison Loudon, a project manager at Ensign-Bickford who works on explosive technology for the mission.

The part you can’t test

Here’s what makes this kind of work genuinely nerve-wracking. Most of what Ensign-Bickford builds can’t be tested the way you’d test, say, a landing gear strut or an avionics board. Fire the explosive charge, and you’ve destroyed the device. The sample batch from production gives you confidence, but the actual flight hardware goes up untested in the traditional sense.

“It’s always a little nerve-wracking,” Loudon said. “And generally a lot of our products are explosive, we can’t test them, they would be non-functional. So watching that launch for me was very personal.”

The company also built a separate emergency system attached to the large orange core stage that boosted Orion to space. That device didn’t fire, and nobody wanted it to. It’s a flight termination system, essentially a self-destruct mechanism that would disable the rocket if it veered off course during ascent. It’s there precisely so it never has to be used.

Loudon said she held her breath through the launch anyway.

“I have a sense of relief, actually, that the product is kinda just there for the ride, and I’m OK with that,” she said. “We get joy from when we do our testing on a sample of the product to make sure everything’s been made properly and it’s performing perfectly.”

That’s the job. Build it right, then hope the world never notices it worked.

Connecticut’s aerospace footprint

Ensign-Bickford isn’t alone. Dozens of Connecticut companies have components riding on the Artemis program, and the list reads like a map of the state’s industrial corridor.

Pratt & Whitney in East Hartford, one of the state’s largest employers, contributed engine technology. Farmington-based Otis Elevator, whose engineering division has long worked on aerospace applications well beyond its elevator business, also contributed. Henkel Corp. in Rocky Hill and Collins Aerospace in Windsor Locks round out a supply chain that stretches from the Gold Coast to the Hartford suburbs.

For Fairfield County commuters who watch the defense and aerospace hiring cycles closely, this matters. Pratt & Whitney alone employs thousands across East Hartford and surrounding towns, and contracts tied to NASA programs like Artemis flow downstream to suppliers and subcontractors throughout the state. When a mission like this succeeds, it strengthens the case for continued federal investment in the companies doing the work.

The Orion capsule was expected to reenter the atmosphere shortly after 8 p.m. Friday and splash down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California. The mission set records for how far humans have traveled from Earth.

What’s next

Artemis III is the one NASA has been building toward: an actual lunar landing, the first crewed touchdown on the moon’s surface since Apollo 17 in 1972. Whether Ensign-Bickford and Connecticut’s other aerospace suppliers have roles in that mission hasn’t been fully detailed publicly, but given the program’s supply chain continuity, it would be surprising if they didn’t.

Reporting from CT Mirror contributed to this story.

For Simsbury, this is what the quiet work of precision manufacturing looks like. No ribbon cuttings. No press conferences at splashdown. Just a device that fired exactly when it was supposed to, and four astronauts on their way home.