Every July 20th, the world celebrates the first two people who landed on the moon, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, and Emerson celebrates a little extra because we were there, too! More specifically, Emerson was represented by our popular Rosemount sensors, which at that time, were part of a separate company, Rosemount Engineering, headed by inventor Frank Werner.
Werner was doing research at the University of Minnesota’s aeronautical lab when the U.S. Air Force asked him to make sensors for high-speed aircraft. So in 1956, Werner, Vernon Heath, and Robert Keppel founded Rosemount Engineering in a converted chicken coop not far from the Rosemount lab. Rosemount Engineering’s sensors became standard equipment on jet aircraft, as well as on missiles and at NASA.
Naturally, those Rosemount sensors went to the moon on July 20th, 1969. Spacesuits worn by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin carried an array of Rosemount sensors, including ones that monitored oxygen flow. Then, a Rosemount sensor was planted 6 feet into the moon’s surface to measure temperatures long after the astronauts left.
After those notable beginnings, Emerson's Paine™ sensors today have found their place to the farthest reaches of space with Voyager and support the many commercial ‘earth to space and back again’ missions. From customizable sensors supporting propulsion monitoring, space probe servo-valves, control surface actuators, and orbital maneuver to the space station, Emerson helps design engineers reach for the stars.
So the next time you gather action-packed data from your Emerson Rosemount sensors, remember the same advanced technology helped keep our astronauts alive and were there for that giant leap for humankind.