Centuries ago, sailing vessels roamed the seven seas to explore new and distant lands around the Earth.
Today, a different style of “sailing ship” – built by members of the MTD-affiliated Machinists (IAM) – just completed a 5-year, 1.8 billion-mile journey from Cape Canaveral, FL to the planet Jupiter.
The Juno space probe was constructed by IAM Local 44 members at Lockheed Martin in Decatur, AL and launched by Machinists Local 610 members from the central Florida spaceport. Its mission will be to collect data and relay it to NASA about Jupiter while orbiting the solar system’s largest planet for the next 20 months.