Justin Bergfalk builds space robots for a living.
Bergfalk, 33, has a workday much different than most: His daily routine involves donning clean-room gear — an all-white, completely encompassing getup affectionately known as a “bunny suit” — to enter a sterile environment and do incredibly precise and demanding work.
Bergfalk is a highly trained technician at Littleton-based Lockheed Martin Space Systems. His latest project is building the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite R-Series, or GOES-R, weather satellite — a joint project for NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
“It’s pretty cool. Some days it’s just like a regular job — I come in and get in the grind,” he said. “Some days, though, it’s pretty amazing to know I’m building something going into space.”
About 169,810 Coloradans, including Bergfalk, are employed in space-related jobs with the state’s nearly 500 aerospace companies and suppliers generating an annual payroll of $3.2 billion in Colorado, according to data from the Colorado Space Coalition.
, the first of four satellites being built in Colorado, will launch in March 2016 to help fill the data gap from America’s rapidly aging fleet of weather satellites.
The project carries an initial contract amount of about $1 billion, according to Lockheed Martin.
Additionally, Centennial-based United Launch Alliance was awarded the $446 million launch contract to carry GOES-R and -S to space aboard Atlas V rockets.
Big dollar amounts, for sure. But projects such as GOES bring much more to Colorado than may be immediately apparent.
Consider this: Lockheed Martin has purchased goods or services for the GOES project from 50 Colorado companies at the cost of $25 million.
Three of them — in Centennial, . in Louisville and in Littleton — are subcontractors on the project.
These smaller aerospace companies help form the supply-chain backbone to Colorado’s aerospace economy, playing an integral role in propelling the state to the top spot in the nation for private aerospace employment.
Of the state’s nearly 500 aerospace-related companies, 55 percent of them employ 10 or fewer people. In 2010, that number was 45 percent.
“I think that’s a trend that directly speaks to the innovation potential that Colorado has in its advanced industry sectors,” said Vicky Lea, director of the Colorado Space Coalition. “It speaks to the entrepreneurial spirit and can be seen in the large number of SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) awards to Colorado companies.”
Fostering small businesses isn’t a recent development in the aerospace sector. SEAKR, which was founded in California in the early 1980s, came to Colorado in 1995 after winning a large contract from Martin Marietta, which merged with Lockheed to form Lockheed Martin.
In those days, SEAKR had only 20 employees. The company has since grown to almost 500 employees, boasting a 2014 revenue of about $130 million, SEAKR senior vice president Chris Miller said.
“One of the reasons for moving here was to be in close proximity to our new large customer. There’s also a lot of aerospace in Colorado — Ball Corporation, Lockheed Martin,” he said. “There’s a better state regulatory system and a quality of life living here in Colorado, as opposed to California, so that was a big part of the reason.”
The company is heavily involved in many Colorado-centric missions, from building the data recorders on DigitalGlobe’s WorldView satellites to creating image-processing units for the Orion spacecraft.
For the GOES mission, SEAKR engineers created an instrument to check the spacecraft’s electrical currents.
“We don’t pursue the limelight as much as other companies do, but many of the spacecraft that go up nowadays have something from SEAKR on them,” Miller said. “We’re not big attention seekers. We’re a bunch of engineers that want to do a good job, get the hardware built and get the product out the door to our customers.”
GOES-R will launch in March 2016 to monitor the Western Hemisphere. GOES-S will follow soon. The satellites are as high-tech as they come, collecting three times more data at a rate five times faster than current satellites in 15 spectral bands — various ways of viewing electromagnetic energy.
“It will help us understand more in terms of intensification of the storm,” said Tim Gasparrini, Lockheed Martin GOES-R program manager. “Currently they do reasonably well at storm-track prediction, but this will help them better quantify the storm’s size.”
This enables more accurate forecasting data and quicker issuing of severe-weather warnings, potentially saving lives. The data will have economic implications for industries like shipping, agriculture and airlines. All rely on accurate weather data for planning.
GOES also works in conjunction with missions such as , to help scientists understand the effect space weather has on climate change and how to better protect Earth from the effects of solar storms.
While humanity will benefit greatly from the science GOES brings, the mission takes on a personal note for Bergfalk, along with the other hundreds of skilled Coloradans who worked on the project.
It’s a labor of love .
“I love what I do. I have to. … It’s a lot of hours — working every other weekend when we get down to the wire,” he said. “These spacecraft are like an unruly teen — you just want to get them out of the house. But when they launch, it’s like sending them out of the nest — you spend years working on something, and then it’s gone.”
Laura Keeney: 303-954-1337, lkeeney@denverpost.com or twitter.com/LauraKeeney
GOES facts
There are four GOES satellites: R, S, T and U. The letter designation is replaced by a number once a satellite is launched and in orbit.
These GOES models shut down for only two hours per year, as opposed to their predecessor’s 300 hours.
The satellite has an orbit life of 15 years.
GOES-R is 5.5 meters tall and has a dry mass of about 6,173 pounds.
The University of Colorado built GOES’ Extreme ultraviolet/X-ray Irradiance Sensors instruments.
