NEW ORLEANS (WGNO)— NASA’s Artemis 1 moon mission is now set to blast off on Saturday, after being scrubbed earlier this week because of engine issues.
WGNO”s Kenny Lopez discovered the impact of this rocket launch is huge for our New Orleans area because parts of it were manufactured at Michoud.
Its not a matter of if Artemis 1 will launch it is a matter of when, and the economic impact of Artemis’ moon mission is huge for our area and will be for the next 20 years and beyond.
At Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans East, they built the engines and the Orion capsule which will launch to the moon and back. Currently at Michoud they are continuing their production and manufacturing of engines and Orion capsules for future Artemis missions.
Jeff Schwartz with the City of New Orleans’ Office of Economic Development says the primary impacts are that Michoud employs between 3,000 and 4,000 people and then Stennis Space Center in Hancock County, Mississippi employs another 1,000 people.
Ultimately Artemis will attract more companies which will bring more money in to New Orleans.
“I think bigger picture this speaks to a lot of the prowess that the City of New Orleans has in industries like advanced manufacturing and aerospace that we don’t frequently hear about. So it is really exciting to see something sitting on a launchpad at Cape Canaveral, Florida that 90 percent was built in New Orleans so this really is a testament that New Orleans is the nation’s rocket factory,” Schwartz said.
Big companies like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Aerojet Rocketdyne are already working with Michoud.
According to Stennis, NASA’s Economic global impact in 2021 was almost $1-billion dollars, and the direct 50-mile radius impact to Stennis was $754-million dollars. The average salary for a Stennis employee with benefits is $105-thousand dollars.