EDUCATION

County Chamber Vice President of Workforce Lindsay Ferguson and Alabama Community College System Chancellor Jimmy Baker.

The Drake State Advanced Manufacturing Center is scheduled to be complete in fall of 2024. The facility, its interior and its landscape will be designed by the Goodwyn Mills Cawood architecture firm. The facility will be constructed by Fite Building Company. The ACCS ASPIRE 2030 initiative, which funds the construction of educational buildings at all levels in Alabama, identified the facility as a necessity.

Those participating in the groundbreaking itself were President Sims, Senior Vice Chancellor Price, Mark Salmon, Representative Hall, Mayor Battle, Chairman McCutchen, Dr. Beth Richardson and Hunter Swanson. w

NASA officials gathered at the Marshall Flight Center in Huntsville on Friday, June 9, to announce the selection of Blue Origin of Kent, Washington, as a second Artemis Lunar Lander provider.

According to NASA, Blue Origin will design, develop, test, and verify its Blue Moon lander to meet NASA’s human landing system (HLS) requirements for recurring astronaut expeditions to the lunar surface, including docking with Gateway, a space station where crew transfer in lunar orbit. In addition to design and development work, the contract includes one uncrewed demonstration mission to the lunar surface before a crewed demo on the Artemis V mission in 2029. The total award value of the firm-fixed price contract is $3.4 billion.