After a quick trip from Louisiana to Florida via the Super Guppy Transport, the latest Orion crew module was mated with the “birdcage”—a structural assembly system. This is just the latest step in the lead up to the fully integrated flight of Orion and NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) booster—slated for late 2018.
The birdcage will be used to change Orion’s orientation as it transforms from merely a pressure vessel to a finished spacecraft. This transformation will see avionics systems, propulsion modules, parachutes as well as life support systems added. Together these elements will become the living quarters for astronauts on deep space missions.
This production unit is lighter than its predecessors, shedding a lot of weight as the design progressed from test articles that were used for Exploration Flight Test (EFT) 1, which launched on a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket in December 2014.
Lessons learned on EFT-1 are now being implemented on the spacecraft’s design for the Exploration Mission 1—slated to take to the skies on the SLS.