Toronto-based Berg Chilling Systems has delivered a key cooling system for NASA’s Artemis IV mission—just as the Trump administration proposed a budget grounding the 2028 mission that was expected to land astronauts on the moon.
Berg’s refrigeration system sits on top of the Mobile Launcher 2 (ML2) system at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center and cools the Orion crew capsule. The technology will have to withstand the extreme conditions of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, including the 1,200-C temperature and 8.9 million pounds of launch thrust.
“The moon is much closer and is the perfect proving ground for the scores of new technologies that need to be developed to successfully land people on Mars.”
Stephanie Yeung,
Marketing specialist,
Berg Chilling Systems
The machinery is also expected to last well beyond the timeline of the Artemis missions, regardless of their fate. It has resistance to “decades of corrosion,” according to Berg. NASA wants it to remain functional for 25 years. Berg President Don Berggren claimed the cooling system is one of the company’s “most technically demanding” efforts in the industrial refrigeration company’s 52-year history.
However, company spokeswoman Stephanie Yeung told BetaKit the cooling hardware is “purpose built” for ML2. If the Trump administration’s proposed 2026 budget cancels Artemis IV and other SLS-based missions, the cooling system “may not be used,” according to Yeung.
The representative added that Berg “remains hopeful” that the moon missions will go ahead. The company questioned the White House’s plans to refocus NASA on Mars missions, claiming that the technical challenges are “enormous.”
“The moon is much closer and is the perfect proving ground for the scores of new technologies that need to be developed to successfully land people on Mars,” Yeung said. “To go to Mars, NASA has got to go to the moon first.”
NASA’ Artemis program is meant to return humans to the moon for the first time since 1972, and ultimately create a permanent presence that can be used for crewed deep space missions, including visits to Mars. The United States (US) government space agency announced the program in 2017 and was originally supposed to conduct its first crewed moon landing in 2024, but delays have pushed that back to 2027. The Artemis I test flight launched in November 2022.
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Artemis IV is currently scheduled to launch in September 2028, but its fate is now uncertain. The mission would carry four astronauts and a habitation module to the Lunar Gateway, humanity’s first space station beyond low Earth orbit, where the International Space Station (ISS) is. From there, two of the crew members will land on the moon using a SpaceX-made Starship rocket to conduct exploratory missions and scientific experiments.
Canadian equipment has routinely played an important role in NASA missions. Most notably, Spar Aerospace and its eventual owner MDA Space have provided robotic Canadarm systems for the Space Shuttle and the ISS. MDA will build Canadarm3 for the Lunar Gateway.
University of Waterloo spinoff KA Imaging recently made history by helping to field the first medical X-ray system in space aboard the privately-run Fram2 mission.
Feature image courtesy NASA HQ Photo on Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).