4 Jul. () –
The integrated Orion spacecraft, which will be used for NASA’s Artemis II crewed mission to orbit the Moon, has been undergoing the final rounds of testing and assembly.
The checks carried out include end-to-end performance verification of its subsystems and leak checking of its propulsion systems.
A 30-ton crane returned Orion to the newly renovated altitude chamber, where it underwent electromagnetic testing.
The spacecraft will now undergo a series of tests that will expose it to a near-vacuum environment by removing air, thereby creating a space where the pressure is extremely low. This results in no atmosphere, similar to what the spacecraft will experience during future lunar missions, NASA reports.
The data recorded during these tests will be used to qualify the spacecraft. to safely fly with Artemis II astronauts through the extreme environment of space.
LAUNCH IN 14 MONTHS
To strengthen the security of the program, NASA decided last January delaying the Artemis II mission by almost a year, until September 2025, and leaving the long-awaited Artemis III mission, which had been scheduled for next year, for 2026, to carry humans to the soil of the lunar south pole.
The crew assigned to Artemis II is made up of three NASA astronauts – Reid Wiseman as commander, Victor Glober as pilot and Christina Koch as mission specialist – and Canadian Jeremy Hansen, as mission specialist.
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