Our Work. Their Mission.
When the Rocket Lifts Off Tonight, Our Work Goes With It
Today is a historic day—not just for NASA, not just for America, but for every person who has ever looked up at the night sky and wondered what’s possible.
Tonight, April 1, 2026, NASA’s Artemis II mission is scheduled to lift off from Launch Complex 39B at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. For the first time since Apollo 17 in 1972, human beings will travel beyond low Earth orbit. Four astronauts—Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, Mission Specialist Christina Koch, and CSA Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen—will embark on a 10-day journey around the Moon and back. It is the boldest human spaceflight mission in more than half a century.
And a piece of Gillette, Wyoming helped this happen.
Our hISTORY at Kennedy Space Center
At L&H Industrial, we believe that machines can always be stronger, smarter, and more reliable. We don’t settle—and when NASA needed partners who could deliver to that same standard, they called on us. Twice.
Upgrading the Crawler-Transporter 2
The Crawler-Transporter 2 (CT-2) is one of the most iconic machines on earth. Built in the 1960s to carry Saturn V rockets to the launch pad during the Apollo program, it is the largest self-powered land vehicle ever constructed. It weighs 6 million pounds. It moves at one mile per hour. And it has carried every crewed rocket to the pad since the dawn of the Space Age.
To support the Artemis program and the next generation of space exploration, CT-2 needed a significant upgrade. The stakes couldn’t have been higher. NASA needed a partner with the precision, capability, and character to take it on.
Beginning with a proposal in October 2012, L&H Industrial was selected as one of only two companies uniquely suited to perform this work. Over the following years, our team manufactured and installed more than 1,300 precision-machined components, rebuilding the crawler’s lower roller assemblies to increase its payload capacity by 6 million pounds. Every part was machined to tolerances of +/- 0.0002″—tighter than the width of a human hair. We then rebuilt all 16 propel transmissions, with each gearbox disassembled, inspected, repaired, and rebuilt to NASA’s exacting standards. A NASA engineer summarized the results plainly: the data suggested that L&H did an outstanding job on every one of the sixteen gearboxes.
In March 2016, CT-2 completed its final test—a 4-mile trek to the launch pad—and passed every verification and validation with flying colors.
Tonight, that same Crawler-Transporter 2 will be positioned at Launch Complex 39B, ready to support the Artemis II mission. The parts our tradesmen machined. The gearboxes our team rebuilt. The precision our people delivered. All of it underneath one of the greatest achievements in the history of human exploration.
Manufacturing the Mission-Critical Flame Deflector
Our second chapter at Kennedy Space Center came after Artemis I. When that 2022 launch subjected Launch Pad 39B’s flame deflector system to nearly 9 million pounds of thrust, the intense heat and force compromised the cladding plates inside the flame trench—the structure responsible for diverting the rocket’s exhaust, heat, and pressure away from the vehicle at liftoff.
NASA needed a more durable solution. They needed cladding plates that could withstand one of the harshest environments on earth, manufactured to a standard that left zero margin for failure. Working closely with NASA and Amentum, L&H Industrial invested in research, development, and full-scale prototype manufacturing to validate performance before a single production plate was made.
The result: a reinforced flame deflector system ready to support Artemis II and the missions that follow. When that rocket ignites tonight at Launch Complex 39B, the flame deflector our team helped build will be doing its job—channeling the fire, protecting the pad, and making sure the mission proceeds as planned.
The People Behind the Work
What makes L&H Industrial different isn’t just our equipment or our capabilities—it’s our people. The machinists, welders, mechanics, engineers, and field service crews who pour their skill and integrity into everything we build. Many of them have been with this company for decades. Some are second and third generation. All of them share the same belief: that quality is not negotiable, that safety is non-negotiable, and that the work you put your name on reflects who you are.
Working with NASA demanded a new level of accountability—more paperwork, more approvals, tighter tolerances than anything our industry had seen. Our team rose to every challenge. And tonight, as that rocket clears the tower at 39B, we’ll be watching with the same pride that every one of our people has earned.
Watch History Tonight
Liftoff is scheduled for no earlier than 6:24 p.m. EDT tonight. You can watch live on NASA+, YouTube, and Amazon Prime starting at 12:50 p.m. EDT.
Watch live: https://www.nasa.gov/live
Full mission information: https://www.nasa.gov/mission/artemis-ii/
Learn more about L&H Industrial’s work at Kennedy Space Center:
– Crawler-Transporter 2 Case Study: https://www.lnh.net/blog/nasa-crawler-transporter-2/
– Flame Deflector Case Study: https://www.lnh.net/news/case-study-critical-flame-deflector-manufacturing/
We believe machines can always be stronger, smarter, and more reliable. Tonight, the world gets to see that belief in action—350,000 miles from Earth.
Godspeed, Artemis II.
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