The Orion spacecraft, from NASA, traveled seven miles to the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center on Thursday, marking its penultimate relocation before its planned 2026 liftoff.
NASA secured a special permission allowing them to persist with operations in specific sectors during the government shutdown, including the Artemis II endeavor.
The spacecraft, encompassing the crew and service components, was conveyed seven miles from the Launch Abort System Facility to the VAB around midnight EDT on Friday.
Four astronauts will journey in Orion. The Artemis II team will be the initial humans to approach the moon so closely since 1972. The astronauts comprise Commander Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen. They designated the vehicle “Integrity.”
Charlie Blackwell-Thomson, the Artemis 2 launch director, presented a mission outline briefing on Sept. 22 and indicated that the Orion Stage Adapter would be arranged in High Bay 3 the week before its presence, Spaceflightnow noted.
Orion will encounter a multitude of evaluations in the approaching months, she expressed. Corresponding to the Artemis I mission, Orion will undergo the End-to-End Comm Test and the Interface Verification Test. However, additional tests will be conducted due to the presence of a crew.
“Those fresh evaluations encompass the Countdown Demonstration Test, centered around our crewed flight. Returning to the shuttle period, we executed a parallel test termed TCDT: Terminal Countdown Demonstration Test,” Spaceflightnow quoted Blackwell-Thompson. “That involves equipping the crew in their suits, their emergence, our progression through the checklist and countdown. They’ll board the vessel, we’ll secure them, conduct communication validations, execute the configuration of the crew module, and engage in a countdown to the inner regions of terminal count before a scheduled halt.”
Subsequent to the completion of Countdown Demonstration Test Part 1, teams will perform an assessment of the flight termination system and initiate concluding vehicle closures, she stated.
“And once everything is finalized, we’ll prepare for departure from the VAB to the pad,” Blackwell-Thompson conveyed, regarding the subsequent voyage of the craft — approximately four miles. “Upon reaching the launch pad, we will establish connections between the Mobile Launcher and the pad. We have a limited amount of evaluation that we will undertake there as well.”
Following that, the wet dress rehearsal commences. This is the evaluation that detected hydrogen fuel emissions in Artemis I. Blackwell-Thomson remarked last month that the emission concern has been “resolved.” They revised the configuration of a valve and presented a smoother fueling technique three years prior, Ars Technica stated.
“That’ll entail a complete tanking of the vehicle, encompassing the core stage and upper stage. We’ll transition into a terminal count, and correspondingly, we will proceed with a countdown within a terminal count to roughly the 29-second juncture, subsequently ceasing that evaluation,” she clarified. “We’ll then examine the data and, within a few days, engage in the launch countdown.”
The tasks and evaluations at the pad necessitate approximately 18 days, Blackwell-Thomson indicated.
Sourse: www.upi.com
