To the Moon and beyond: Airbus delivers
powerhouse for NASA's Orion spacecraft
Send a link to a friend
[November 03, 2018]
By Andrea Shalal
BERLIN (Reuters) - Europe's Airbus <AIR.PA>
on Friday delivered the "powerhouse" for NASA's new Orion Spaceship that
will take astronauts to the Moon and beyond in coming years, hitting a
key milestone that should lead to hundreds of millions of euros in
future orders.
Engineers at the Airbus plant in Bremen, Germany on Thursday carefully
packed the spacecraft into a special container that will fly aboard a
huge Antonov cargo plane to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, a
first step on its way to deep space.
In Florida, the module will be joined with the Orion crew module built
by Lockheed Martin <LMT.N>, followed by over a year of intensive testing
before the first three-week mission orbiting the Moon is launched in
2020, albeit without people.
Future production of Orion and the European module could result in
billions of dollars of new orders for the companies involved in coming
years, said Bill Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for human
exploration and operations for NASA.

"This is the system that will enable humans to move sustainably into
deep space ... and leave the Earth-Moon system for the first time ever,"
he said.
Current plans are for a first crewed mission in 2022, but NASA and the
European Space Agency (ESA) then plan to launch a manned mission every
year, making the Orion project both politically and economically
important at a time when China and other countries are racing to gain a
foothold in space.
Airbus's European Service Module will provide propulsion, power, thermal
control and consumables to the Orion crew module, marking the first time
that NASA will use a European-built system as a critical element to
power an American spacecraft.
"This is a very big step. The delivery and the flight to America are
just the beginning of a journey that will ultimately take us to 60,000
miles beyond the moon, further than any human has ever flown before,"
Oliver Juckenhoefel, vice president of on-orbit services and exploration
for Airbus, told Reuters.
[to top of second column]
|

Airbus staff prepares the European Service Module (ESM) for the U.S.
spacecraft "Orion" in Bremen, Germany, November 1, 2018 before
shipment to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Picture taken
November 1, 2018. Airbus/Handout via REUTERS

Orion is part of a growing push to put humans back on the Moon,
where the unexpected discovery of water has energized scientists,
with rapid technological developments such as 3D printing paving the
way for lunar-based infrastructure, such as data server relay
stations, in coming years.
"It sounds like science fiction, but I'm convinced it's coming, and
the only question for us in Europe is whether we want to be part of
it or not," Juckenhoefel said. "In industry, we have to be careful
that we don't miss the boat."
NASA's Gerstenmaier said ESA was interested in participating in a
so-called "lunar gateway" with an eye to landing humans on the Moon
again around 2028, and providing a base for travel to Mars and
beyond.
Airbus won a 390 million euro ($446.12 million) contract to build
the first ESM module in 2014, and is working on a second order
valued at 200 million euros. Now it is negotiating with ESA for
further orders that could add up to a billion euros, Juckenhoefel
said.
Mike Hawes, who runs the $11 billion Orion program for Lockheed,
underscored the importance of the program for future exploration of
deep space.
He said Lockheed was negotiating with NASA for up to 12 follow-on
missions that could result in billions of dollars of new orders,
while working to halve the cost of future spacecraft.
(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
[© 2018 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.]
Copyright 2018 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content.
 |