For over 70 years, astronauts have flown to the moon wearing spacesuits made in Delaware
The 1969 moon landing is an integral part of American history. But few people may know that the spacesuits worn by astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong were made in Delaware.
Sue Pleasanton was stitching together parts of a glove when we spoke with her earlier this year. The seamstress has worked at ILC Dover for nearly 30 years.
"When I first started training people, I used to say to them, 'Would you feel comfortable letting your son wear that to the moon?' Because it's that life-critical," Pleasanton said.
In a different part of the Frederica, Delaware, facility is the testing room.
"So this is what we call our busy board! This is the playground, so to speak, for the suit," test lab supervisor Emmanuel Morris said.
Sandra Roof was on that board, reenacting motions astronauts would perform on the International Space Station, over and over and over, again.
"All of this is just to make sure that everything is copacetic while the astronauts are actually out in space," Morris said.
The team here stresses that there's no room for failure.
"When an astronaut for Apollo would come here, they'd get brought to the plant and then get fitted for their Apollo suit, and each suit got a tag associated with it," program manager Steve Wyatt said.
The ILC Dover team has proudly made spacesuits worn on six moon landings since the first man walked on the moon in 1969. Since then, their suits were used on more than 250 space flights and during some 3,000 hours of spacewalks.
"When you see it in action, it's really fulfilling, and knowing that they can go complete their mission and come back safe and get back to their family, like that's the ultimate goal," Wyatt said.
The company's history spans more than 70 years.
"From the Apollo suit to today, there's been a tremendous amount of improvement in technology, the fit, the mobility and we're continuing to iterate on that," director of operations Kevin Becker said.
The facility has grown from only building spacesuits to also producing products like blimps and Mars landing bags. In fact — unsurprisingly — the team played a huge role in the first rover landing on Mars.
"We built that here, and my name is on that bag. Mine and many others — a lot of engineers and manufacturing and whatnot, but it's laying on the surface of Mars," Pleasanton said with a smile.
As the country celebrates 250 years, ILC Dover wants to continue innovating in the space world.
"As Americans, we take on big challenges, we do things that people don't think are possible, and I like to think we play our part in advancing the soft goods side of that," Becker said.