Scheduled For Launch Into Space In December

NASA’s first completed Orion crew module is sitting atop its service module at the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Facility at Kennedy Space Center in Florida after being completed over the weekend.

The crew and service module are scheduled to be transferred together on Thursday to the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility, where the Orion spacecraft will be fueled with ammonia and hyper-propellants for its flight test. It later will be moved again for the installation of its launch abort system. At that point, the spacecraft will be complete and ready to stack on top of the Delta IV Heavy rocket that will carry it into space on its first flight in December.

Orion is undergoing preparations for its maiden flight in December atop a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket, an uncrewed test that will take it 3,600 miles above Earth on a 4.5-hour mission to test the systems critical for future human missions to deep space. After two orbits, Orion will re-enter Earth’s atmosphere at almost 20,000 miles per hour before its parachute system deploys to slow the spacecraft for a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.

The spacecraft will eventually carry humans into space aboard NASA's SLS rocket, described by the agency as the most powerful rocket ever built. The first unmanned launch of an Orion crew module aboard SLS has been pushed back until November, 2018.

(Image provided by NASA)

FMI: www.nasa.gov