Lockheed Martin, NASA Working Around the Clock to Complete Artemis II’s Orion Capsule in Time for 2024 Launch Written 16 August 2023
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Liliana Villarreal, Artemis landing and recovery director with Exploration Ground Systems (EGS), stands in front of the Artemis II Crew Module Test Article (CMTA) | Credit: Kim Shiflett; NASA; Public Domain
NASA Space Flight reports that the Orion spacecraft for the Artemis II mission “is nearing final assembly and testing at prime contractor Lockheed Martin’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) production facility.” After a final standalone test “on the Orion crew module (CM), it is expected to be mated to the service module (SM) in mid-September.” If there are no problems “in the remaining months of testing, Lockheed Martin believes they can complete their work by the end of April next year.” NASA is “planning Artemis II as a week-and-a-half long, lunar-flyby mission; it will be the first crewed test flight for Orion and the Space Launch System (SLS) and the four-person astronaut crew recently visited KSC together for the first time to see their spacecraft.” NASA is still “retaining its late November 2024 launch forecast as a ‘work to’ date, although the pace of work is currently ‘a number of weeks’ behind that forecast.”
Full Story (NASA Space Flight)