NASA Welds Together Orion Crew Module; 2018 Launch Awaits
Engineers at the NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans have finished welding together the pressure vessel for the first Lunar Orion crew module that will be perched atop a Space Launch Systems rocket for an unmanned mission in 2018.
In what will be the first joint venture of Orion with SLS, the flight launch that has been called the Exploration Mission, or EM-1, will see the Orion going to the Moon and back. It could be the first flight of a human rated spacecraft since the Apollo era ended 4 decades ago.
The unmanned mission will be sent in order to check the equipment and will be a stepping stone to full-fledged manned mission that will follow.
The friction-stir welding process was initiated in September last year. The FSW process, as it is better known, first transformed metals from a solid into a plastic-like state. Then, a rotating pin tool softened the weld and forged a bond between the two metal components to form a uniform welded joint. The bonds so formed were found to be extremely strong and the process is now being looked at as an essential requirement for the next-generation space hardware.
In this case, the pressure vessel comprised of seven large aluminium pieces that had to be welded together by this cutting edge solid-state technique.
Mike Sarafin, Exploration Mission-1 manager at NASA Headquarters in Washington is one out of the many who have expressed their admiration and confidence about the event. He signals that the Orion-SLS partnership will be a long-lasting one, it will “travel farther than a spacecraft built for humans has ever travelledâ€.
The Orion is designed to go even farther. It is being designed to explore the deeper realms of space – the Moon, asteroids and even Mars.
The November 2018 lift-off is scheduled from Launch Complex 39B at the Kennedy Space Center and is definitely one of the most anticipated events for NASA and the rest of the world.
Source: NASA Completes Welding on Lunar Orion EM-1 Pressure Vessel Launching in 2018 - Universe Today
In what will be the first joint venture of Orion with SLS, the flight launch that has been called the Exploration Mission, or EM-1, will see the Orion going to the Moon and back. It could be the first flight of a human rated spacecraft since the Apollo era ended 4 decades ago.
The unmanned mission will be sent in order to check the equipment and will be a stepping stone to full-fledged manned mission that will follow.
The friction-stir welding process was initiated in September last year. The FSW process, as it is better known, first transformed metals from a solid into a plastic-like state. Then, a rotating pin tool softened the weld and forged a bond between the two metal components to form a uniform welded joint. The bonds so formed were found to be extremely strong and the process is now being looked at as an essential requirement for the next-generation space hardware.
In this case, the pressure vessel comprised of seven large aluminium pieces that had to be welded together by this cutting edge solid-state technique.
Mike Sarafin, Exploration Mission-1 manager at NASA Headquarters in Washington is one out of the many who have expressed their admiration and confidence about the event. He signals that the Orion-SLS partnership will be a long-lasting one, it will “travel farther than a spacecraft built for humans has ever travelledâ€.
The Orion is designed to go even farther. It is being designed to explore the deeper realms of space – the Moon, asteroids and even Mars.
The November 2018 lift-off is scheduled from Launch Complex 39B at the Kennedy Space Center and is definitely one of the most anticipated events for NASA and the rest of the world.
Source: NASA Completes Welding on Lunar Orion EM-1 Pressure Vessel Launching in 2018 - Universe Today
Replies
You are reading an archived discussion.
Related Posts
I'm currently doing B-Tech ECE third year .. I'm going to paper presentation and mini project on topic "WIRELESS CHARGER". anyone give me suggestion..Share your experience.
Remember, Skoda's Mega Man-Pram? If you thought its 20inch alloy wheels and all-terrain response were ground breaking features, you will find the Smartbe Intelligent Stroller out of this world. Smartbe...
Project Abstract / Summary : A self-compacting concrete (SCC) is the one that can be placed in the form and can go through obstructions by its own weight and without...
Project Abstract / Summary : The main objective of this project is to convert water into ice instantly. In this project we have used the zeolite technology. This is done...
Project Abstract / Summary : my project is all about to convert numeric into word.
it is build in c or c++.
it is simple but quit logical.
i found...