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Preview: Rocket Engine Maker in Orbit Over Mars Mission

The Aerojet Rocketdyne Holdings Inc. campus in Chatsworth is about to get a huge boost from NASA’s planned multibillion-dollar mission to send a man to Mars. The government space agency has chosen the company’s RS-25 engines that provided lift for the space shuttle as the primary source of propulsion for the Space Launch System, a new heavy-lift rocket that will take astronauts first to the moon and then on to the red planet. Aerojet Rocketdyne expects that building new versions of the engine will eventually account for half of the work for the 1,300 technicians, engineers and others employed at the plant. “We are ramping up capabilities here in Chatsworth to start production of the engines again,” said Jim Paulsen, vice president of program execution for advanced space and launch, who is based in the Valley. The De Soto Avenue and Nordhoff Street facility also makes engines used on the Delta IV and Atlas V rockets that take military and intelligence satellites into space and is a subcontractor on the CST-100 space capsule being developed by Boeing Co. to take astronauts to the International Space Station. NASA expects to spend $7 billion on all facets of its Space Launch System through 2018. There are estimates it ultimately will cost in the hundreds of billions to get a man to Mars, perhaps in 2035. Still investors may not be pleased. While the company’s stock price has made huge gains since the recession, trading around $2 in 2009, it recently slipped from an all time high of $23.39 in March as losses have piled up. In its last fiscal year, the company recorded a net loss of $53 million on revenue of $1.6 billion. Then in the fiscal first quarter ended Feb. 28, the company lost $3.9 million (-7 cents a share) on revenue of $319 million. Shares closed at $20.62 on June 10. Read the full story in the June 15 issue of the San Fernando Valley Business Journal.

Mark Madler
Mark Madler
Mark R. Madler covers aviation & aerospace, manufacturing, technology, automotive & transportation, media & entertainment and the Antelope Valley. He joined the company in February 2006. Madler previously worked as a reporter for the Burbank Leader. Before that, he was a reporter for the City News Bureau of Chicago and several daily newspapers in the suburban Chicago area. He has a bachelor’s of science degree in journalism from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

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