NASA on Wednesday said the Orion space vehicle would fly with humans no later than April 2023.
NASA said in a press release officials completed a critical milestone for Orion by finishing a rigorous technical and programmatic review. NASA said this is the first time it has reached this level of progress for a spacecraft designed to take humans into deep space beyond the moon, including to an asteroid placed in lunar orbit and on the journey to Mars.
A successful test of an uncrewed Orion capsule, Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1), flew in December. This test provided important data that allowed engineers to identify risks associated with deep space flight and re-entry and use that knowledge to improve the design of Orion for its next test flights, EM-1 and EM-2. EM-2 will be the first crewed mission.
The recent review, culminating in what is known within NASA as Key Decision Point C (KDP-C), represents approval for the Orion program plan. Orion will eventually ride on NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) vehicle, which is being developed by Boeing [BA]. Orion is being developed by Lockheed Martin [LMT].
The KDP-C decision commits NASA to a development cost baseline of nearly $7 billion from October through EM-2. Orion engineers are now executing a review of Orion’s engineering design and technical progress of the vehicle systems and subsystems. This Critical Design Review (CDR) will demonstrate Orion is ready to proceed to full-scale fabrication, assembly, integration and testing. SLS recently completed this milestone, NASA said, and its ground systems development and operations (GSDO) program will begin its review this fall.
Orion, in the coming months, will complete its CDR; see the arrival of a test version for the European Space Agency (ESA)-provided service module at NASA’s Plum Brook Station, Ohio; perform a series of parachute tests; and complete the welding of the crew pressure vessel.