On Dec. 5, 2014, NASA took one step closer toward human exploration in deep space, thanks in part to Aerojet Rocketdyne in Redmond.

Aerojet Rocketdyne — an aerospace and defense company that provides propulsion and energetics to the space, missile defense and strategic systems (among other things) — provided propulsion for the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV).

On Tuesday, Larry Price with Lockheed Martin, the company that built the Orion spacecraft’s command module, visited Aerojet Rocketdyne in Redmond to thank those involved in the Orion Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1) mission.

The launch was the inaugural flight of the Orion and Aerojet Rocketdyne was involved in all phases, from the launch, to the re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere.

Price said the mission was a tremendous success, adding that the company makes a solid motor. He said they have had a roughly 40-year relationship with Aerojet Rocketdyne and that the company has a long heritage of reliability, which is important.

Price said the Orion project started three or four years ago and it has been an incremental process. Following Orion’s first flight in December of last year, he said there will be two more upcoming unmanned flights before the craft will take off with people on board.

The goal, Price said, is to demonstrate the mission’s capabilities and affordability so there can be more projects like Orion in the future. He said they want to be as economically efficient as possible in order to maximize taxpayers’ dollars.

A total of 20 engines and motors for Orion were built in Redmond, said Jennifer McCormick, one of the Aerojet Rocketdyne project managers for Orion. Along with fellow project manager Kim Wierenga, the two women led teams that worked on engines for both manned and unmanned modules of the spacecraft.

McCormick said Aerojet Rocketdyne has a history of supporting manned and unmanned space missions and Orion puts them back into the manned arena.

“It does mean a lot of engineering work,” she admitted.

McCormick said when it comes to the engineering for a manned spacecraft, there is a need for higher reliability, higher safety factors and stricter margins.

There are about 400 people working onsite at the Redmond Aerojet Rocketdyne location and Wierenga said — like any project they work on — every department and division was involved in Orion and it came out to be about 100 full-time equivalent employees working on the project.

Wierenga said they set up an assembly line specifically for Orion at Aerojet Rocketdyne but they were also able to share the line operations for other programs and projects within the company.

With Aerojet Rocketdyne — which is headquartered in Sacramento, Calif. — in Redmond, McCormick and Wierenga said they are able to pull from the local talent pool of expertise as other aerospace companies such as Boeing are located in the area. In addition, the University of Washington also provides the company with fresh talent. The two women know this from personal experience.

“We both came from the University of Washington,” Wierenga said.