The Orion crew capsule that will be the first to fly aboard NASA’s new Space Launch System (SLS) heavy-lift rocket has been powered up for the first time, Orion prime contractor Lockheed Martin[LMT] announced Aug. 22.
The event, which took place Aug. 11 at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, “was the first time the vehicle management computers and the power and data units were installed on the crew module, loaded with flight software and tested,” the company said. “Evaluating these core systems, thought of as the ‘brain and heart’ of the Orion capsule, is the first step in testing all of the crew module subsystems.”
The Orion program will now continue integrating 55 avionics components on the spacecraft over the next two to three months, Lockheed Martin said. Environmental testing will follow.
Orion is slated to lift off aboard SLS for the first time in 2019 as part of Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1). During the nearly three-week EM-1, astronauts will not be on the crew capsule, which will travel more than 40,000 miles beyond the moon.
An earlier version of Orion flew unmanned aboard a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Delta 4 rocket in 2014 for Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1). It is now displayed at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex.