Honeywell Aerospace - Space

Space

Honeywell Aerospace has been involved in most major space missions and projects. Some notable projects include:

• From 1966 to 1967 Honeywell developed its Orbital Scanner program for NASA’s Langley Research Center.
• In 1958 it participated in Vanguard, America’s first successful earth satellite.
• In 1963 the company participated in an experiment called “APRE,” which used a giant balloon to carry a camera to high altitudes to determine the effects of the atmosphere on photography.
• In 1964 Honeywell developed a complete space vehicle called Scanner.
• Honeywell also developed flight controls, computer systems and more for the nation’s first reusable spacecraft dubbed the Space Shuttle.
• Honeywell also did work for the Skylab experiments, the Viking program and the Pioneer 10.

In 1966 a young filmmaker, Stanley Kubrick, started developing the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Five Honeywell engineers were assigned to the project to create plausible fictional space technologies. Honeywell computers were also featured in “Modesty Blaise,” a 1966 movie, and in “The Billion Dollar Brain" in 1967.

Space-related business didn’t recover for Honeywell after the end of the space race until the 1990s. Honeywell was awarded a notable contract to provide controls to the International Space Station, a joint project of the Russian, European, Italian, Japanese, Canadian and US space agencies.

Honeywell also manufactures Manned Mobile Units (MMUs), commonly known as space suits. Honeywell’s space division is focused on three areas:

• Flights and ground system operations. Ground operations and control, managing health and safety of satellites, voice & data communications and operations engineering.
• Science data processing. Processing signal data from satellites, spaceships or ground control as well as flight projects and experiments.
• Mission support. Flight data system support, analysis of flight software requirements, software design, implementation, testing and anomaly investigation. Engineers hardware and software systems.