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To the Moon and beyond: Airbus delivers powerhouse for…


Europe’s Airbus said on Friday it had delivered the ‘powerhouse’ for NASA’s new Orion Spaceship that will take astronauts to the Moon and beyond in coming years, hitting a key milestone that should lead to hundreds of millions of euros in future orders.

Engineers at the Airbus plant in Bremen, Germany on Thursday carefully packed the spacecraft into a special container that will fly aboard a huge Antonov cargo plane to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, a first step on its way to deep space.

In Florida, the module will be joined with the Orion crew module built by Lockheed Martin, followed by over a year of intensive testing before the first three-week mission orbiting the Moon is launched in 2020, albeit without people.

Airbus staff prepares the European Service Module (ESM) for the U.S. spacecraft "Orion" in Bremen, Germany, November 1, 2018 before shipment to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Airbus staff prepares the European Service Module (ESM) for the U.S. spacecraft “Orion” in Bremen, Germany, November 1, 2018 before shipment to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

WHAT IS IT? 

Airbus’s European Service Module will provide propulsion, power, thermal control and consumables to the Orion crew module, marking the first time that NASA will use a European-built system as a critical element to power an American spacecraft. 

Current plans call for a first crewed mission in 2022, but NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) then plan to launch a manned mission every year, making the Orion project both politically and economically important at a time when China and other countries are racing to gain a foothold in space.

Airbus’s European Service Module will provide propulsion, power, thermal control and consumables to the Orion crew module, marking the first time that NASA will use a European-built system as a critical element to power an American spacecraft.

‘This is a very big step,’ Oliver Juckenhoefel, vice president of on-orbit services and exploration for Airbus, told Reuters.

‘The delivery and the flight to America are just the beginning of a journey that will ultimately take us to 60,000 miles beyond the moon, further than any human has ever flown before,’

In Florida, the module will be joined with the Orion crew module built by Lockheed Martin, followed by over a year of intensive testing before the first three-week mission orbiting the Moon is launched in 2020, albeit without people.

In Florida, the module will be joined with the Orion crew module built by Lockheed Martin, followed by over a year of intensive testing before the first three-week mission orbiting the Moon is launched in 2020, albeit without people.

Orion is part of a growing push to put humans back on the Moon, where the unexpected discovery of water has energised scientists, with rapid technological developments such as 3D printing paving the way for lunar-based infrastructure, such as data server relay stations, in coming years.

‘It sounds like science fiction, but I’m convinced it’s coming, and the only question for us in Europe is whether we want to be part of it or not,’ Juckenhoefel said. 

‘In industry, we have to be careful that we don’t miss the boat.’

Airbus won a 390 million euro ($446.12 million) contract to build the first ESM module in 2014, and is already working on a second order valued at 200 million euros.

 Now it is negotiating with ESA for further orders that could add up to a billion euros, he said.

Mike Hawes, who runs the $11 billion Orion programme for Lockheed, said it would play a pivotal role in exploration of deep space, with NASA already looking to land people back on the Moon, and many talking about potential missions to Mars.

Nasa's Orion, stacked on a Space Launch System rocket capable of lifting 70 metric tons, will launch from a newly refurbished Kennedy Space Center in 2020.

Nasa’s Orion, stacked on a Space Launch System rocket capable of lifting 70 metric tons, will launch from a newly refurbished Kennedy Space Center in 2020.

He said Lockheed was negotiating with NASA for up to 12 follow-on missions that could result in billions of dollars of new orders, while working to halve the cost of future spacecraft.

First, Nasa’s Orion, stacked on a Space Launch System rocket capable of lifting 70 metric tons, will launch from a newly refurbished Kennedy Space Center in 2020.

The uncrewed Orion will travel into Distant Retrograde Orbit, breaking the distance record reached by the most remote Apollo spacecraft, and then 30,000 miles farther out (275,000 total miles).

The mission will last 22 days and was designed to test system readiness for future crewed operations.

WHAT ARE NASA’S PLANS FOR ORION?

Nasa’s Orion, stacked on a Space Launch System rocket capable of lifting 70 metric tons will launch from a newly refurbished Kennedy Space Center in 2019 for the EM-1 mission.

The uncrewed Orion will travel into Distant Retrograde Orbit, breaking the distance record reached by the most remote Apollo spacecraft, and then 30,000 miles farther out (275,000 total miles).

The mission will last 22 days and was designed to test system readiness for future crewed operations. 

Then, following the uncrewed space flight tests, the first crewed test flight will launch.

While NASA has been hard at work in recent months readying the Orion spacecraft and SLS rocket for an unmanned flight next year, the space agency and its partners are already looking ahead. An artist's impression is pictured 

While NASA has been hard at work in recent months readying the Orion spacecraft and SLS rocket for an unmanned flight next year, the space agency and its partners are already looking ahead. An artist’s impression is pictured 

This could come as early as August 2021, according to NASA.

Though crew size will be determined closer to launch, the space agency plans to fly up to four astronauts.

Orion will carry the crew through two orbits around Earth to ensure everything is working properly.

Them, it will carry out different orbital to eventually be on a path toward the moon.

The crew will fly around the backside of the moon, creating a figure eight, before returning to Earth using the moon’s gravitational pull ‘like a slingshot to bring Orion home,’ NASA says.



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