admin NASA completed the ultimate round of testing for the Orion spacecraft which meant to fly the Artemis mission, is expected to “return the next American man and deliver the first American woman to the surface of the Moon by 2024″.
“We learned some things, but nothing jumped out at us. We didn’t discover anything that was going to pose major problems for us to operate the spacecraft, things that would force us to go back in and either changes the design or the location of anything,” Schneider said.
Along the testing at Plum Brook complete, NASA will transport the Orion back to the Kennedy Space Center nearly in a week on a Super Guppy aircraft. It will appear to the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building for final steps for its launch.
The formal handover to the spacecraft to exploration ground systems contractor Jacobs is currently scheduled for June, and will mark the end of Lockheed’s work on the spacecraft under its contract. Jacobs will then be responsible for launch preparations, such as fueling the spacecraft and later integrating the spacecraft with the SLS.
NASA has not yet announced a date of new launch for the Artemis 1 mission, which had previously been scheduled for late this year. NASA Associate Administrator Steve Jurczyk said in end of the February that the launch would be likely take place in mid or late 2021.
The Plum Brook testing is an only former event for Orion, which will require significant work. “The trip to Plum Brook and back is in and of itself a massive effort,” he said, requiring things like the development of special fixtures to transport Orion, which is normally kept in the vertical position, horizontally. “I can’t overstate how difficult, and involved it is just to get the vehicle moved like that.” Orion spacecraft will go through thermal and vacuum tests in separate chambers at KSC later “We’ve been building Artemis 1 for a long time now,” Schneider said adding “I’m very much excited about delivering Artemis 1 to NASA this year. It’s been a long journey.”
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