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NASA has started unboxing the Orion spacecraft after its epic mission to the moon.
Technicians from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida opened the hatch of Orion and began removing payloads that flew to the moon and returned to the capsule during the Artemis 1 mission. This job will take a long time.
“This week, technicians will extract nine avionics cases from Orion, which will then be refurbished for Artemis 2, the first mission with astronauts,” NASA officials wrote in an update. (opens in a new tab) Tuesday (January 10).
“In the coming months, technicians will remove the hazardous materials that remain on board. When completed, the spacecraft will travel to NASA Glenn’s Neil A. Armstrong Test Facility. [in Ohio] for drop-level acoustic vibration and other environmental tests,” they added.
Related: The 10 best images from NASA’s Artemis 1 lunar mission
Artemis 1 launched Nov. 16 from KSC atop a Space Launch System rocket, sending the uncrewed Orion on a rescue cruise to lunar orbit. The mission, the first of NASA’s Artemis lunar exploration program, ended when Orion crashed off Baja California on December 11.
The capsule then traveled by truck across the country, returning to KSC on December 30. Since then, workers have been inspecting Orion and its various systems, evaluating their performance during the nearly 26-day Artemis 1 mission.
The capsule’s 16.5-foot-wide (5-meter) heat shield – the largest of its kind ever used – is given special attention, given the extreme conditions it has experienced. During Orion’s re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere on Dec. 11, the heat shield endured temperatures up to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,800 degrees Celsius), about half the heat of the sun’s surface. .
These ongoing inspections will inform preparations for the Artemis 2 mission, which is expected to launch astronauts around the moon in 2024.
If all goes well with this flight, NASA can begin preparing for Artemis 3, which will land crew members near the moon’s south pole, where the agency plans to build a research outpost. here the end of the decade. Artemis 3 is expected to take off in 2025 or 2026.
Mike Wall is the author of “The low (opens in a new tab)(Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for extraterrestrial life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall (opens in a new tab). Follow us on twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in a new tab) or Facebook (opens in a new tab).
