This year, engineers will make important progress developing and testing the Orion spacecraft that will send astronauts to deep space destinations on the journey to Mars. NASA will mark critical steps necessary in preparation for both the spacecraft’s first mission to deep space atop the agency’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, and for future missions with astronauts. Here’s a look at some of the significant milestones and testing set for 2016.

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Early in 2016, technicians at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans will finish welding together Orion’s pressure vessel, which will provide a sealed environment for astronaut life support in future human-rated crew modules, before shipping it to Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Once there, engineers will start testing it to make sure the structure is sound and can endure the harsh conditions of deep space it will endure when it travels thousands of miles beyond the moon on the first integrated mission of Orion and SLS, known as Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1). Following a pressure proof test, the team will outfit the crew module with all of the avionics and systems the spacecraft needs before it can be integrated with the SLS rocket and processed for launch.

Read the full story at Space Daily.