nasaspaceflight.com by Philip Sloss 11/21/2018
The 404-day clock to connect, checkout, and test the first integrated Orion spacecraft for its flight to the Moon started in early November with the arrival of the European Service Module (ESM) at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. All of the major Orion hardware for Exploration Mission-1 is in the Operations and Checkout (O&C) Building at KSC for the first time, where prime contractor Lockheed Martin will finish assembly.
There is essentially no padding in the year-long schedule, so technicians wasted no time unpacking the ESM and immediately began preparations to mate the U.S.-built Crew Module Adapter (CMA) to the top of the module.
The schedule calls for completion of assembly and checkout of the first integrated Orion, a series of tests of the new vehicle in Ohio, and final work back at KSC to hand it over to Exploration Ground Systems (EGS) for launch processing.
ESM assembly complete, flown to KSC
ESM Flight Model-1 (FM-1) arrived at KSC onboard an Antonov An-124 aircraft inside a transportation container, with the jumbo jet touching down at the Shuttle Landing Facility on November 6.
Completion of FM-1, the first ESM flight article, is a major milestone in Orion Program development and in the schedule to prepare for its launch on the Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1) test flight, currently forecast for 2020. Assembly, integration, and testing of FM-1 had been a primary or secondary critical path item in the EM-1 schedule.
“I’m happy to get here, this has been a long time coming,†Exploration Systems Development (ESD) Deputy Associate Administrator Bill Hill said during an event on November 16 celebrating the ESM’s arrival. “What was more exciting though was just to see our test team and the smiles on their faces. Because it’s here, they’ve now got a chance to do their critical work.â€
“With the delivery of this ESA (European Space Agency) Service Module we now finally have the element that allows us to take people farther into space than we’ve ever gone before, so it is a really big event for all of us in the Orion Program,†Mark Kirasich, NASA’s Orion Program Manager, added.
The ESM provides the equipment for propulsion and attitude control, long-duration power, thermal control, and consumables for the spacecraft and eventually multi-person crews on future missions. It forms the core of the overall Orion spacecraft’s Service Module (SM), which includes the CMA and aerodynamic launch fairings that are jettisoned during ascent.
The spacecraft that will fly the EM-1 test flight is the first with working versions of all the modules, minus the provisions for crew. The first Orion test flight, Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1) in late 2014, flew the first working Crew Module (CM) with mass simulators for the Service Module elements.
On EFT-1, the spacecraft remained attached to the upper stage of the Delta 4 Heavy launch vehicle until shortly before re-entry, flying a four-hour mission to an intermediate altitude Earth orbit. Orion will fly independently on EM-1 for the first time; following delivery by its Space Launch System (SLS) launch vehicle on a trans-lunar trajectory, the spacecraft will fly into a Distant Retrograde Orbit (DRO) of the Moon and stay there for up to a few weeks before making a mirror image set of burns to return to Earth.
There is a lot of work to do to finish putting the EM-1 Orion spacecraft together and make sure it is functioning correctly. A 404-day schedule of assembly, checkout, and testing started when the ESM arrived in Florida, and the module was immediately taken off the An-124 transport and driven to the O&C building to start work.
“The plane landed at 11 am and by 4 pm the Service Module was in the building,†Kirasich said. “What we’re going to do now and what we’ll keep doing for the next several months is ‘integrate and test’ and ‘integrate and test’ to make sure that these vehicles function well together.â€
More:
https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2018/11/following-esm-arrival-ksc-orion-final-assembly-em-1/
