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Redstone Arsenal

42,000 employees | 38,000 acres

Community

Huntsville

“Best Place to Live for Families”

U.S. News & World Report, 2023

“Best Place to Live”

U.S. News & World Report, 2022

Cummings Research Park

2^nd Largest in U.S.

Marshall

#1 Place to Work in Alabama

Forbes, 2022

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Launch

Marshall has diverse capabilities we provide for NASA missions, industry collaboration, international partnerships, and support for other government agencies.
We talk about those capabilities in 4 domains: Launch, Land, Live and Learn.
Marshall’s launch portfolio, which includes our expertise in space transportation, contains a plethora of missions.
Artemis I was a successful test flight, and everything that we learn from it will get us one step closer to putting the first woman and person of color on the Moon, as well as having a sustained presence on the lunar surface.
But Artemis I was more than just a test flight. It was a demonstration of a new capability.
Artemis I is just the beginning…
At Marshall, Michoud and at our commercial partners all over the country, work is well underway on the hardware for Artemis two, three, four and five!

Commercial Crew

While our SLS team is busy preparing for future flights of the world’s most powerful rocket, NASA is also launching astronauts from American soil through the Commercial Crew Program.
The image you see in that top circle is the launch of the SpaceX Crew-5 in the fall of 2022.
Marshall is proud of the work we do to support commercial crew, which includes the Boeing CST-100 Starliner launch planned for this year.
This will be Boeing’s first crewed test flight to the International Space Station – a critical milestone from the Commercial Crew Program to have a second provider sending astronauts to Low Earth Orbit.
Marshall provides launch vehicle engineering support for all the Commercial Crew providers, ensuring the launch vehicles are safe and ready for launch.
During Commercial Crew launches, we have teams working in our Huntsville Operations Support Center, providing real-time launch support.
We also train the crew members prior to flight and provide 24/7/365 operations support for their science utilization support aboard ISS.
This is a busy year for NASA in LEO, as SpaceX’s Crew 6 launched in February and Crew 7 is also scheduled for August.

Nuclear Thermal Propulsion

The illustration you see in that bottom circle is a protype for a future Nuclear Thermal Propulsion vehicle.
On Jan. 24 NASA made an exciting announcement about a partnership with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) on a rocket engine that would utilize nuclear thermal propulsion.
NTP is 3 times or more efficient than the present chemical propulsion used by the rockets currently in operation.
This could allow a spacecraft to traverse the 140 million miles average distance between Earth and Mars far more quickly than is possible today, greatly reducing the amount of time astronauts are exposed to dangerous levels of radiation.
Safety is the cornerstone upon which we build mission success and limiting travel time for astronauts is an important step in their safety.

Mars Ascent Vehicle

That image on the right is an illustration of the Mars Ascent vehicle that is one of our next big projects here at Marshall…
Building on Marshall’s propulsion expertise is our work on the Mars Sample Return Mission
It is a truly impressive mission that NASA is working on and is a top priority for NASA Science.
As a part of that, Marshall is developing the Mars Ascent Vehicle, which will launch rock and soil samples from the surface of Mars to a Martian orbit. From there, an Earth Return Orbiter will capture the samples and carry them back to Earth.
We anticipate launching to Mars in 2028, with the samples returning in the early 2030s.
A huge milestone for NASA and humanity, these will be the first soil samples returned from another planet, as well the first time we’ve launched a rocket from another planet.
I can only imagine what insights we will gain from this mission.
The Mars Ascent Vehicle recently completed the Preliminary Design Review for the Solid Rocket Motors, which is the primary propulsion for MAV.
In March, the MAV team will be conducting a hot fire test of a first stage demonstration motor.
This will be the first, key test milestone for MAV, and for the Mars Sample Return Program.
All these accomplishments are significant to the progress of the Mars Sample Return Program, and we’re so excited to play our part in this mission - in conjunction with our partners at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Northrop Grumman, and Lockheed Martin.