NASA's Orion for Exploration Mission-1 lifted for pressure testing

Zee Media Bureau

New Delhi: The US space agency NASA has lifted Orion spacecraft crew module for Exploration Mission-1 to test stand for pressure testing in the Neil Armstrong Operations & Checkout Building at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

A team from NASA and Lockheed Martin are getting ready for proof pressure testing on Orion's spacecraft. Proof testing is an evaluation that will help verify the structural integrity of Orion’s underlying structure known as the pressure vessel.

The work is an important milestone on Orion’s journey toward EM-1, its mission atop the Space Launch System rocket in 2018. But EM-1 will not have humans aboard as it will pave way for future missions with astronauts and for missions to the red planet Mars.

Orion spacecraft will travel for thousands of miles, during the flight, beyond the Moon over the course of about three weeks.

The assembling and testing of Orion for the EM-1 mission is taking place at different locations across the United States and abroad. Engineers at NASA Glenn’s Plum Brook Station in Ohio are testing a structural representation of the service module with sound pressure and vibration.

Meanwhile, at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, engineers are in the thick of a series of tests, dropping a representative Orion crew capsule in Langley’s Hydro Impact Basin to understand what the spacecraft and astronauts may experience when landing in the Pacific Ocean after deep-space missions.

Finally, the first flight module of the Orion service module, provided by ESA (European Space Agency), was delivered this week by Thales Alenia Space to the Airbus Defence and Space, which is building it, to its location in Bremen, Germany.

(Source: NASA)