Artemis 2 Orion Spacecraft Commences Testing Ahead of Moon Mission with Astronauts in 2025
NASA's Orion spacecraft for Artemis 2 is slated to fly around the moon with four astronauts around September 2025. In order to check the condition of the spacecraft, the engineers of NASA have commenced the EMC testing of the spacecraft. This is make sure that the spacecraft is ready for the flight.
Testing in a vacuum chamber at NASA's Kennedy Space Center has begun to assess Orion for "electromagnetic interference and electromagnetic compatibility," NASA officials wrote in a statement. The aim is to make sure the spacecraft can continue working well amid these fields, both spacecraft-generated and space-generated, ahead of the big launch day.
The four Artemis 2 astronauts who will fly around the moon aboard Orion are NASA commander Reid Wiseman, NASA pilot Victor Glover (who will become the first Black person to leave low Earth orbit, or LEO), NASA mission specialist Christina Koch (the first woman to go beyond LEO) and Canadian Space Agency mission specialist Jeremy Hansen (the first non-American to achieve the feat).
Their spacecraft, now at KSC's Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building, is inside a chamber with a lot of moon heritage. It was used to "test environmental and life support systems on the lunar and command modules during the Apollo program" that brought nine astronaut crews to the moon between 1968 and 1972, NASA officials wrote.
There are multiple altitude chambers available at KSC; Orion is in the west chamber, which was upgraded to "test the spacecraft in a vacuum environment that simulates an altitude of up to 250,000 feet (76.2 km)," NASA wrote.
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