Jane Edwards
Lockheed Martin is now ready to transport the crew capsule of the Orion spacecraft from Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans to Kennedy Space Center in Florida following the completion of the structural closeout weld in July, NASASpaceflight.com reported Tuesday.
Orion will launch with four astronauts aboard the Space Launch System rocket as part of Exploration Mission-2 that aims to perform a crewed lunar flyby before returning to Earth.
The EM-2 pressure vessel features a forward bulkhead, aft assembly, tunnel, backbone and three cone panels and is the fifth article developed at MAF.
Lockheed and NASA carried out several post-weld checks after finishing the closeout weld.
“We were in the paint booth, doing the final touch-ups of paint on the welds that we just completed and it’s pretty much ready to get boxed up,†said Scott Wilson, NASA’s production operations manager for the Orion program.
