Governor Newsom highlights California’s out-of-this-world economy at the new Space Shuttle Endeavour installation

The Space Shuttle Endeavour

The Endeavour, the last space shuttle built, completed 25 missions. First launched in 1992, Endeavour made several historic flights to build the International Space Station (ISS), serviced the Hubble Space Telescope, and contributed to vital Earth and space science research. Ahead of its final mission in 2011, NASA selected the California Science Center as the permanent home for the space shuttle to highlight California’s rich aerospace history. Every NASA space shuttle, including Endeavour, was manufactured and assembled in Southern California. Endeavour leaves an incredible legacy in space exploration, which it now shares with the world at the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center.

The Golden State’s innovation ecosystem fuels the future

With diverse aerospace and technology companies, world-class research institutions, and a skilled workforce, the Golden State is driving innovation in advanced technologies. California’s Space Economy spans launch, testing, R&D, tracking and communications, and defense infrastructure across every region of the state.

🚀 The Golden State is home to one-third of the nation’s space technology companies and has more aerospace engineers and defense personnel than any other state. 

🚀 California ranks #1 in corporate aerospace R&D spending and #1 in space-technology venture capital. Together, these reflect the nation’s highest concentration of aerospace talent, with California alone accounting for roughly 40% of all U.S. space-technology patents. 

🚀 A higher education engine—California Community Colleges (CCC), California State University (CSU), and the University of California (UC)—forms the nation’s most productive public pipeline for aerospace talent. Alongside private institutions such as Stanford, USC, and Caltech, this engine helps California produce more aerospace engineers than anywhere in the U.S. 

🚀 California has over 96,000 aerospace manufacturing jobs, more than any other state.

🚀 More than 500 companies and 16,000 workers in the state contributed to NASA’s Artemis program, including Artemis II, the United States’ first crewed lunar mission in more than 50 years. 

🚀 California receives about $3 billion a year in NASA science funding, the most of any state, and 28% of all NASA research and development.

Accelerating our aerospace and defense sector

Within Governor Newsom’s California Jobs First Economic Blueprint, the first statewide economic development strategy in more than 20 years, aerospace & defense is an “accelerate” sector – one where additional investments from the public and private sectors have the capacity to “bend the curve” to catalyze sustained growth. The sector contributes an estimated $35 billion annually to California’s gross domestic product (GDP). Accordingly, the state has made a number of targeted investments into the sector since 2025, including:

🌊 Under Governor Newsom’s Jobs First Regional Investment Initiative, the state awarded $16.95 million in August 2025 to two projects designed to provide ecosystem support and uplift the aerospace & defense sector’s infrastructure and workforce in the Central Coast.

🧑‍🚀 In August 2026, Governor Newsom awarded an additional $19 million to seven projects in Kern County, the Southern Border, and the Bay Area for infrastructure, ecosystem services, and workforce development in the aerospace and defense industry.

💲Governor Newsom earlier this year announced the following aerospace and defense companies received California Competes Tax Credits:

Mach Industries, resulting in a $32.5 million investment to expand its defense technology manufacturing and research & development in Huntington Beach, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, creating 1,057 jobs. 
Apex Space, resulting in a $165.5 million investment to expand its satellite manufacturing presence in Los Angeles and the broader Southern California region, creating 483 jobs. 
Voyager Technologies, resulting in a $75 million investment to expand its Long Beach aerospace component manufacturing facility, creating 152 jobs.
Lanteris Space, resulting in a $16 million investment and the creation of 70 jobs to expand its satellite manufacturing facility in San Jose.
In June 2025, A.S. Aerospace received an award, resulting in a $19 million investment to continue manufacturing precision aerospace hardware in Palmdale and Santa Clarita.
Last November, Hadrian Automation, Inc. was a beneficiary, creating 650 jobs and investing $52 million in Torrance and Northern California to expand its aerospace component manufacturing. True Anomaly also received an award to expand its satellite manufacturing facilities in Long Beach, creating 400 jobs and investing $12.7 million .
Vast, headquartered in Long Beach, received a Cal Competes award in June in exchange for $87 million private investment to expand space station research, development, and manufacturing, while creating at least 660 new jobs in California.

The nation’s space investments run through California

From NASA’s robotic explorers to the Space Force’s acquisition headquarters, the federal government’s space enterprise is anchored in the Golden State. California hosts NASA’s largest concentration of major research centers and facilities, the command that buys the nation’s military space systems, and the West Coast’s only ground stations in NASA’s Deep Space Network that keep America in contact with spacecraft across the solar system.

Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena leads in robotic space exploration, sending rovers to Mars, probes to the farthest bounds of the solar system, and satellites to advance understanding of our planet. JPL is also a major center for quantum research at the Quantum Space Innovation Center (QSIC).

As of late 2024, California is the top state in the country for:

NASA Employment Impact: Each NASA job in California supports an additional 35.7 jobs across the state, resulting in a total employment impact of 66,208 jobs.
NASA science funding: California led the nation in NASA science funding in fiscal year 2025, accounting for $2.72 billion.

Generations of aerospace & defense leadership

California’s role in space stretches back to the beginning of the Space Age. JPL in Pasadena built Explorer 1, America’s first satellite, in 1958, and the first GPS satellite, built in Seal Beach, launched from Vandenberg in 1978. Every main engine on the Saturn V that carried Apollo astronauts to the Moon was built in Los Angeles, and the original Apollo spacecraft was manufactured across the state. The Space Shuttle fleet was assembled in Palmdale, Skylab, the first U.S. space station, was built in Huntington Beach, and the RS-25 engine, originally developed for the Shuttle and now powering the Space Launch System for the Artemis program, has been designed and manufactured in the San Fernando Valley since the 1970s.

California-built spacecraft have explored every corner of the solar system. The twin Voyagers, built and managed by JPL, were the first human-made objects to enter interstellar space, and Voyager 1 remains the most distant object from Earth ever made. Every NASA Mars rover, from Sojourner to Perseverance, was built in Pasadena, and Ingenuity, built by JPL and Simi Valley’s AeroVironment, made the first powered flight on another world. The Hubble Space Telescope was built and integrated in Sunnyvale, the James Webb Space Telescope was assembled in Redondo Beach, and in 2004 SpaceShipOne flew from Mojave to complete the world’s first privately developed crewed spaceflight.

California is the world’s fourth-largest economy, with output topping $4.5 trillion. To learn more about the state’s efforts to grow the space sector, visit GO-Biz Aerospace & Defense.

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