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Orion takes Super Guppy ride to Kennedy Space Center

February 2nd, 2016

The future of human spaceflight may be headed into deep space, but first it needed a ride to Florida from the Super Guppy.

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Now at Kennedy Space Center is the Orion spacecraft pressure vessel, which had been housed at the Michoud Assembly Facility in Louisiana. It flew aboard the Super Guppy, NASA’s modified transport airplane, with a cargo compartment 25 feet wide, 25 feet tall and 111 feet deep. It can carry more 26 tons.

The pressure vessel, which is the sealed space that gives its passengers life support, is the primary structure for what will be the eventual Orion capsule used on the next deep-space test launch.

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The Orion vessel minus human passengers will fly on a test launch designated Exploration Mission-1, atop the Space Launch System rocket, the precursor to NASA’s plans to launch future manned deep-space missions. The test launch is slated for 2018. A mission with humans aboard was originally planned for 2021, but that date is looking more like 2023, NASA officials said last September.

“We’ve started off the year with an key step in our process to get ready for Exploration Mission-1, when together Orion and SLS will travel farther than a spacecraft built for humans has ever traveled,” said Mike Sarafin, Exploration Mission-1 manager in January. “This brings us closer to our goal of testing our deep space exploration systems in the proving ground of lunar space before we begin sending astronauts days to weeks from Earth.”

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Read more at the Orlando Sentinel.

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