The region has been instrumental to some of the biggest aerospace projects of the millenium, including bringing humans to the moon and Mars.

As America aims to send humans back to the moon and astronauts potentially go to Mars for the first time, Colorado — with its cluster of talent and growing constellation of space companies — is fast becoming an essential hub to making those missions a reality.

Consider this: Not only is the spacecraft that will hold deep-space astronauts being developed and tested in the metro Denver area, so is the lunar rover that they’ll use.

Colorado is one of the top beneficiaries of the Artemis Moon to Mars project, which is expected to be a major economic boon to the country’s space industry that’s already getting a big boost from the rise of commercial spaceflight. NASA contracted more than 90 companies in Colorado to work on Artemis.

The Moon to Mars missions are expected to support 14,600 jobs in Colorado (second-highest nationwide) and $3 billion in economic output (third-highest), according to a 2022 NASA report.

Indeed, the region has been instrumental in other major aerospace projects.

Local companies have been part of the development of the James Webb Telescope, of tracking Russia’s war against Ukraine with satellite images, of launching methane-detecting sensors and of supporting Amazon’s project to create a constellation of satellites to bring internet to underserved areas.

Colorado space industry’s ‘geographic density’

Florida is famous for its rocket launches. Houston — of “we have a problem” fame — is a center for engineering and mission control. Then there’s Los Angeles, a growing hub for space startups.

So, what about in Colorado?

“Denver actually has a great cross section of all of them,” said Morgan Alu, the head of the Colorado Space Coalition, an affiliate of the Metro Denver Economic Development Corp.

Colorado boasts of the second-largest space economy in the nation, after California, due to its central location, closer elevation to the atmosphere and leading science universities and military bases, including the headquarters of U.S. Space Command in Colorado Springs.

The industry is primarily concentrated around the metro Denver area and the Front Range, which the group sees as operations spanning from the Wyoming border to Colorado Springs and El Paso County.

Colorado Springs is known for satellite operations and debris tracking, services that provide the traffic control of space, while Denver is home to the manufacturing and engineering of satellites and spacecraft that will be sent to Florida’s launch sites.

Top space and defense contractors — such as Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Maxar and Northrop Grumman — developed large campuses in the region. There’s mission control centers and a growing startup scene, Alu said.

More than 60% of aerospace companies in metro Denver have less than 10 employees, according to the Colorado Space Coalition. Nearly 9% have more than 250 workers.

The organization expects startups will continue coming to Colorado, Alu said, as companies want access to top talent and lower operating costs compared to coastal regions.

Another huge draw is that most space companies and labs are within an hour or so of each other, Alu added, making it easier for collaboration between the industry’s titans and startups to win large NASA or U.S. Department of Defense contracts together.

“We have a geographic density that sets the Colorado Front Range apart from our competitors states,” Alu said.

‘Event of the year’

And during one week each year, many are mere minutes from each other.

The industry comes together in Colorado Springs for the Space Symposium, an annual trade show hosted by nonprofit Space Foundation, where top government agencies, space companies, researchers, think tanks and U.S. and international officials discuss their latest initiatives and the biggest trends affecting the industry.

This year, it will run from Monday through Thursday at The Broadmoor Hotel.

Visit Colorado Springs said the event, founded in 1984, brought about $16 million in economic activity to the area last year from visitors staying in local hotels or dining out.

The event attracts more than 1,500 companies to Colorado and 12,000 people from 40 countries are expected to attend, said Space Foundation spokesman Rich Cooper.

Space Foundation is a nonprofit advocacy group for education and collaboration for the global space industry and is headquartered in Colorado Springs, where it hosts the conference each year.

“Space Symposium is the event of the year,” said Amanda Sammartino, spokesperson for Lafayette-based Blue Canyon Technologies, a subsidiary of Raytheon Technologies since 2020.

The show’s highlights include navigating the funding climate for space companies, artificial intelligence, nuclear power in Lower Earth Orbit, manufacturing on the moon, tackling satellite debris and military use.

“We are really looking forward to connecting with local, as well as national and international partners, and not only showcasing the products and solutions that we offer, but also learning from them,” Sammartino said.

The event will have new competition with the Space Force Association launching the Spacepower Conference in Orlando this December.

Space Foundation CEO Heather Pringle said the conferences will play a different role with the new event focused more on junior Space Force guardians looking to be inspired by space defense, while Space Symposium is more big picture and has more international partners.

“I see us as very complimentary,” Pringle said.

A need for collaboration

Colorado is a “regional hotbed” for the industry, Sammartino said, and a place for companies to share their best technologies to develop important space instruments. That collaboration is palpable in the region. 

Consider Blue Canyon, which was acquired in 2020 by Raytheon, which wanted to build up small satellite production and looked to the Lafayette-startup founded in 2008.

“In addition to us having more support, they (Raytheon) can also have that specialization, that niche product line, within their offering,” Sammartino said. The subsidiary has two factories in Boulder and employs more than 400 people.

Blue Canyon Technologies collaborated with the former Ball Aerospace — renamed to Space and Mission Systems after defense manufacturer BAE Systems acquired the Colorado aerospace giant for nearly $5.6 billion — to develop a methane-detecting satellite.

Blue Canyon developed the body of the MethaneSat as Westminster-based Space and Mission Systems worked on the technological cargo for the advocacy nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund. The satellite launched in March to trace methane emissions around the world.

Meanwhile, one of the largest space and defense contractors, Lockheed Martin has nearly tripled its employee count in Colorado over the last decade, said the company’s vice president and general manager of national security space Maria Demaree.

“Just the amount of the military space components that are here, the commercial and the academic just all together really makes it a great place to be in this industry,” said Demaree.

NASA contracted the Maryland-based company to build the Orion spacecraft, part of the Artemis program, set to bring humans back to the moon and potentially Mars. Most of Orion’s development and testing is done at Lockheed Martin’s Waterton Canyon campus in Littleton.

“It’s going to just further the crazy excitement around the space industry that we already have, right? That it’s for everyone,” Demaree said. “The problems that we are trying to solve are going to require diverse approaches and diverse thinking.”

Lockheed Martin employs more than 10,000 people in Colorado. The company first came to Denver in 1956, when the U.S. Air Force wanted to build an inland rocket facility safe from submarine attacks. In addition to its Waterton Canyon campus, it has offices in Denver, Aurora, Highlands Ranch and Colorado Springs.

“We specifically chose this Denver metropolitan area back in the 50s because of the stability of the rock formations for some of the sensitive testing facilities that we would need to build,” Demaree said. “So, that’s what originally brought us here, but it’s just continued over time to be a growth area.”

The market’s growth also means more opportunities, Demaree said. The area has seen an influx of companies come in with skill sets Lockheed Martin would partner with to tackle industry problems such as satellite congestion.

“That’s been a big part of the solution is watching the increasing number of entrants into this market that had not been there a couple decades ago,” Demaree said.

“We’re out looking at all those companies and seeing where we can bring those into our system,” she added.

One example would be developing a software to change satellite mission courses from the ground or using artificial intelligence to make the spacecraft less reliant on human supervision.

And at events like Colorado’s Space Symposium, company officials can learn about new projects in development and find the “best of breed,” plus show off their own achievements to potential partners and customers, Demaree said.

Colorado’s ‘center of gravity’

Colorado is gaining traction in the aerospace industry and is gaining an advantage over traditional hubs, said Alu from the state’s space coalition.

It remains home to U.S. Space Command, a hard fought battle that culminated in the decision last July. That long-awaited decision had capped more than two years of wrangling by officials from both Colorado and Alabama after former President Donald Trump announced in the final days of his administration that the command’s headquarters would move to Alabama.

While tech companies are struggling with finding funding, investment is booming for space startups, helping Colorado further cultivate its environment.

Then there’s the region’s universities, a significant talent pipeline that the the space coalition calls the “center of gravity” for the aerospace workforce.

Aerospace employment in the state has grown 32.5% in five years to nearly 37,000 employees, according to the group’s 2023 report, and the industry has had a $12.7 billion economic impact.

These new jobs pay far above the average Colorado salary at about $135,000.

“There’s been a lot of news coming out of Colorado and it’s largely being seen worldwide as an amazing place to work and play and have your business and move your employees,” Alu said. “We’ve also gotten better at marketing ourselves.”

And the state is also gaining global attention.

Alu said this year’s Space Symposium will be full of meetings with international delegations. 

“There’s a significant presence this year coming to the Symposium and we’ve seen that number rise over the last two-to-three years,” Alu said. “So, we’re excited to be with our international partners and talk about why Colorado is a great place for them to establish their US operations.”

Colorado Spring Gazette military reporter Mary Shinn contributed to this report.