When most people in this industry think about Grainger — the No. 1 company on MDM’s 2022 Top Industrial Distributors list — they don’t think of space missions. Images of cardboard boxes with the MRO supplies giant’s logo in industrial and commercial facilities, schools, healthcare and government facilities come to mind.
Indeed, those settings and customer markets are Grainger’s wheelhouse, but the company is also helping NASA to return humans to the moon for the first time in more than 50 years via the Artemis missions.
In fact, if you’re reading this blog by Dec. 11, Grainger is represented in lunar orbit right now in the form of the names of four team members engraved on tiny microchips inside Artemis’ Orion spacecraft:
- Joe Burroughs, District Sales Manager, Government Sales
- Micah Marshall, Onsite Services Representative
- Matthew Pryor, Manager, Onsite Services
- Gilbert Valdez, Account Manager, Government Sales
Marshall, Pryor and Valdez are seen in this blog’s featured photo above, posing in front of the Artemis III rocket at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Their space-riding names are alongside those of nearly 30,000 other people whose work made the Artemis III mission possible.
So, how does that Grainger foursome and the company contribute to Artemis? For more than 15 years, the distributor has provided NASA’s Houston-based Johnson Space Center facilities with maintenance support and safety, electrical, lighting supplies and more through the company’s KeepStock inventory management system. Grainger supports Artemis I and future Artemis missions by providing tools and parts to contract partners that developed, assembled and tested the technology and engineering work to safely launch the Orion spacecraft from NASA’s Space Launch System and ensure its safe return.
Artemis I was originally scheduled to launch Aug. 29, but a series of four delays pushed that launch to Nov. 16. The 25-day uncrewed mission includes traveling to the moon and back without a lunar landing. Artemis II — currently scheduled to launch no earlier than May 2024 — will repeat that mission, but with a crew of four astronauts. Artemis III will be the first to have crewmembers set foot on the moon and is likely to launch no earlier than 2026. Missions for Artemis IV and V are also planned.
On Nov. 28, I was able to interview one of those four Grainger members whose name is affixed to Artemis’ Orion spacecraft: Joe Burroughs. He is a Grainger Public Sector District Sales Manager who covers the states of South Carolina and Georgia. At the onset of the Artemis program, Burroughs led the Grainger government team in the Houston district as a District Sales Manager. We discussed the nature of the distributor’s NASA partnership and what it means to have the company represented with the Artemis missions that will bring humans back to the moon. See our conversation below:
Mike Hockett, MDM: Can you take me through the history of this Artemis partnership and how it kind of came about?
Joe Burroughs, Grainger: Grainger has supported the Johnson Space Center (JSC) for a little over 15 years. We have an onsite presence there through our inventory management. We have an onsite branch. They are a factory for rockets. That’s all they do. So we partner real closely with them, ensuring that all of their facilities are up and running, and we support NASA in their holistic mission. Artemis, for us, is more specifically around the people safety and facility and some of the consumables that they’ve used.
Hockett: Can you touch more on any other missions that Grainger has supported over those 15 years?
Burroughs: We’ve supported anything that goes to JSC in one form or fashion or another. Sometimes that means helping them support their labs, sometimes that means helping support some of the facility safety folks. So it’s really kind of soup-to-nuts in a lot of ways. Any mission that has gone through JSC we’ve helped support for that time.
Hockett: What are you and the Grainger team most excited about for the future of these Artemis missions in the years to come?
Burroughs: Hopefully, my name is flying around the moon again. I think that it’s an honor to be able to say that is happening. And our goal is really to help support in whatever capacity NASA needs us because we have that wide depth and breadth of products and solutions. Hopefully, whatever they throw our way we’ll be able to support them.
Hockett: Even though I know Grainger has government contracts, when I think of Grainger, NASA and aerospace typically don’t come to mind. What does this partnership say about the company’s capabilities in some of those non-industrial MRO markets?
Burroughs: We’ve been around for 95 years, and through that, we’ve had the opportunity to help support some really cool and unique industries. NASA certainly is one of them. We’re well known in the industrial space, but we also have a significant healthcare presence — helping support healthcare facilities across the country, as well as helping our warfighters and military personnel at a number of our military installations across the country and even internationally.
