A major milestone in NASA's Orion Program is unfolding as of this writing.The ESA Orion Service Module,designed to provide power,propulsion and life support systems to the Orion crew module,has taken off aboard a hulking Antonov AN 25 aircraft on a transatlantic flight from Bremen,Germany to Cape Canaveral Air Force Station,Florida.The 5 November 2018 takeoff was marked by a ceremony on 2 November in Bremen participated in by NASA Astronaut Randy Bresnik,a veteran of the International Space Station.NASA will hold a reception event on 16 November.*
The ESM will undergo final testing and integration with other Orion components,including the new Space Launch System rocket,at NASA facilities in Florida and Ohio.This is to prepare for the uncrewed deep space test flight called Exploration Mission-1,similar to the unmanned test flight the Saturn V rocket made during the Apollo Program.EM-1 is being managed for a launch date of December 2019;yet reviewing possible manufacturing and production schedule risks,such as some hurricane damage that was sustained,June 2020 is currently posted by NASA as the fallback date for the mission.
EM-1 will test the complex navigation procedures and critical systems for sending astronauts farther from Earth than ever before,to a high lunar orbit and eventually Mars,beginning with EM-2 in 2023.On these distant missions,NASA's Deep Space Network will be used for crew communications for the first time.*
Corporate participants in the ESA Orion Service Module project include Airbus Space and Defence;Thales Alenia Space,a subsidiary of Italy's Leonardo S.p.A.;and Orion Program lead contractor Lockheed Martin.*
Airbus Space and Defence (Euronext:EAD);Leonardo S.p.A. (OTCMKTS:FINMF);Lockheed Martin (LMT)
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