[ad_1]
Throughout Artemis I, Orion will enterprise hundreds of miles past the moon throughout an roughly three week mission. Credit score: NASA
Orion is NASA’s new exploration spacecraft, designed to carry astronauts farther than they’ve ever gone before, to destinations in deep space, including an asteroid and Mars. Orion will serve as the exploration vehicle that will carry the crew to space, provide emergency abort capability, sustain the crew during the space travel, and provide safe re-entry from deep space return velocities. Orion will launch on NASA’s powerful new heavy-lift rocket, the Space Launch System.
Named after one of the largest constellations in the night sky, Orion is the name given to the spacecraft that will carry the first woman and first person of color to the Moon. However, before NASA flies astronauts aboard, the spacecraft, powered by the new Space Launch System rocket, will travel tens of thousands of miles on a flight test around the Moon. Watch as teams at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida prepare Orion for that journey, outfitting the spacecraft with its necessary components as it moves along its path to the pad.
See Episode One: The Most Highly effective Rocket NASA Has Ever Constructed.
Video Transcript:
What an thrilling day on the Kennedy House Middle. You possibly can see the Orion spaceship popping out of the O&C constructing the place we’ve been assembling it for a number of years.
As massive a step as that is for us as we speak, and rolling out and beginning the journey of Artemis I to the Moon and past, we’re actually excited for this take a look at program to get this automobile flown and to start the subsequent steps that are to ship people again to the Moon.
The dual sister of Apollo, Artemis is the title given to this system that may return humanity to the Moon. And, named after one of many largest constellations within the night time Sky, Orion is the spacecraft destined to get us there.
Via Artemis missions, NASA will land the primary girl and the primary particular person of colour on the lunar floor. And, these missions will permit us to discover extra of the Moon than ever earlier than, paving the best way for long-term presence in lunar orbit.
We’re rolling the Orion spacecraft out, however it’s starting its journey. We’re actually sort of on the finish of the constructing course of and the start of on the brink of go fly.
However earlier than Orion can journey to our nearest celestial physique, it first should make a couple of pit stops alongside the best way to gas up and prepare for flight.
As we depart right here as we speak, we’re gonna go to a facility that’ll gas the spacecraft with the rocket fuels and propellants it wants, we’ll put a launch abort system on, we’ll ship it out to be stacked on the rocket and launched, and it’s actually the previous couple of yards of the sport.
NASA’s Michoud Meeting Facility in New Orleans is the place, in 2015, technicians with Lockheed Martin started welding the items of the spacecraft’s underlying aluminum construction collectively.
One 12 months later, it arrived in Florida, taking over semi-permanent residence contained in the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Constructing at NASA’s Kennedy House Middle.
Engineers and technicians will spend the subsequent 5 years working nearly across the clock, outfitting Orion with hundreds of parts, and pushing the capsule by means of a number of rounds of rigorous testing, as groups put together it for its flight across the Moon.
Step one although is the crew module’s arrival.
When the crew module exhibits up right here on the O&C constructing, it’s actually only a welded shell of the construction. When it will get right here, we put it right into a fixture all the way down to my left known as the hen cage instrument, and we use that fixture to place and fasten all the mechanically hooked up main and secondary construction for the crew module.
A part of that features the warmth protect, which protects the crew module because it blazes by means of Earth’s environment at an astonishing pace because it returns house.
Technicians with Lockheed bond these thermal safety system merchandise onto the warmth protect proper right here within the O&C, and so they do the identical for the crew module’s ahead bay cowl.
We bond that on right here, and mainly this covers the ahead bay of the crew module such that after we come again into the environment, this will get jettisoned, and all the touchdown system – i.e. parachutes – get deployed and slows the crew module down in order that when it touches down within the ocean, it’s solely going a couple of miles an hour.
With the first and secondary buildings all hooked up, the crew module is examined to see how the whole lot holds up. Orion is pressurized, stressing the welds to make sure they’ll maintain up beneath the right loading.
Afterward, nondestructive analysis of these welds is carried out to test for any voids or cracks.
As soon as the construction is deemed sturdy sufficient, the crew module is moved only a few areas down into the O&C’s clear room for its subsequent spherical of integrations.
We convey that construction into our clear room, which is what you see behind me, as a result of we have to begin integrating the propulsion system, and parts of the environmental management and life help subsystems, and people techniques require a cleaner surroundings than the one we’re standing in out right here.
When all of that’s performed, the crew module is on the transfer once more, to the crew module integration station. There, all the electrical techniques, together with wire harnesses and avionics bins that management the crew module’s steerage navigation, communications, and its energy subsystems, are built-in.
Subsequent, it’s time to convey the spacecraft to life.
We energy it up, after which we go into a complete sequence of practical exams to verify all the subsystems we’ve built-in as much as that time are functioning correctly.
However, the crew module isn’t the one factor that makes up the Orion spacecraft.
All of the folks, the work, the parts which have gone into this automobile, it’s simply an incredible feat.
Groups additionally labored intently with the European House Company to construct the service module – the component that may energy Orion on its journey across the Moon. As soon as that arrives from Bremen, Germany, Lockheed strikes ahead with integrating the 2.
The service module has a really related lifecycle to the crew module. We construct it up structurally, we combine the propulsion system and the opposite fluid techniques, after which we combine it electrically, and energy it up, and do practical exams on it.
And when we now have a full service module, and a full crew module, then we stack the 2 collectively and we now have what’s known as the crew service module for Artemis I.
Beneath the Artemis program, NASA plans to not solely return to the Moon, however to make use of that as a stepping stone to go farther than any human has ever gone earlier than: Mars.
To get there, it’s actually a cross-country and worldwide effort amongst hundreds of people.
When you think about all of the folks on the Johnson House Middle, Marshall House Flight Middle, all throughout the company, SLS, Orion, the European Service Module, Boeing and their team, Lockheed Martin and their team, and to see all of that come together on that launch when we send it on its way to the Moon, it’s gonna be absolutely amazing, and we’re gonna have a lot of really proud, happy people.
Building a spacecraft destined for deep-space exploration from the ground up is no easy task, and the fact that these teams have been able to come together and do just that in the midst of a global pandemic is nothing short of amazing.
It really is a testament to the workforce. If think about what we’ve been through over the years that they’ve been putting this together, and particularly, think about the environment that this team was dealing with.
We’re dealing with covid, and we’re asking these folks to come into work every day and finish this spacecraft so we can keep this mission going.
And we’re ready, I mean we’re excited. So as they turn this over to us, we’re ready to get going.
And really, this is only the start of Orion’s path to the pad.
It’s a little hard to put into words, and when you think about the fact that we are in the first flow of what will be our nation’s deep space exploration program, it hits you in the heart. And it really speaks to why we all are doing what we’re doing.
I never thought as a little kid growing up I’d be part of something like this today. Now as a dad of 2 young girls, to be able to tell them what I do and to be able to have them someday watch the first woman stand on the Moon is pretty amazing to me personally.
As the Orion spacecraft departs the O&C, its next stop is the Multi-Payload Processing Facility, or MPPF, where teams with NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems and prime contractor Jacobs will perform the next set of milestones: fueling and servicing the spacecraft.
We have a few months of hard but rewarding work ahead of us to get to launch. But this is it. This is our year. This is our time, and what folks have worked so hard for.
Now, we’re going to continue with processing, get that thing check out and fueled, get the launch abort motor stuck on top of it.
With fueling of Orion’s crew and service modules complete, the spacecraft moves from the MPPF into the Launch Abort System Facility.
We just finished fueling the spaceship and we moved it to the LASF facility – the Launch Abort System Facility to put the launch abort system on the top of Orion.
And in July 2019, teams completed a critical test – the Ascent Abort-2 flight test – to validate the launch abort system works as expected.
After reaching an altitude of about six miles, where the test spacecraft experienced high-stress conditions expected during launch, the abort sequence triggered.
Within milliseconds, the abort motor fired to pull the crew module away to safety. Its attitude control motor flipped the capsule into the proper orientation, and the jettison motor fired to release the crew module for a splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean.
I feel just honored and humbled every day to be able to work on this stuff.
This rocket is absolutely amazing.
Now that the spacecraft’s launch abort system is securely in place, Orion is ready for the next stop on its path to the pad: the Vehicle Assembly Building.
Once inside, the spacecraft will be placed on top of the Space Launch System rocket – the most powerful rocket the world has ever seen.
[ad_2]
