NASA has joined the crew and service modules of the Orion spacecraft that will be used for the Artemis 2 Moon mission.
The Orion crew and service modules that will be used for the Artemis 2 mission were joined together at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Thursday, announced the space agency.
Over the past several months, engineers worked on the hardware installations and testing before finally connecting the two major components of the Orion spacecraft. The Artemis 2 mission will take NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut Jeremy Hansen on a journey around the Moon.
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The two modules are now integrated, and teams at the space agency will power up the combined crew and service module for the first time. The spacecraft will be put through “power-on” tests first, followed by altitude chamber testing. During that, Orion will be put through conditions as close as possible to the vacuum of deep space.
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Separately, teams at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans structurally joined all four RS-25 engines to the core stage of the Artemis 2 Moon rocket last month. In August, the space agency moved the mobile launcher for the mission to the launchpad for some tests. The mobile launcher will remain there for a few months as NASA teams prepare for the Artemis 2 mission with many tests.
The uncrewed Artemis 1 mission that happened in November last year tested the foundations of NASA’s next-generation space exploration systems, including the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket and the Orion spacecraft. Artemis 2 will be the first crewed mission to test the same systems.
The space agency will fly four astronauts around the Moon over the 10-day Artemis 2 mission. They will stress test Orion’s life support systems to make sure that they are capable of supporting astronauts on longer deep space missions to the Moon and beyond.
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First published on: 24-10-2023 at 15:22 IST
