The success of the water test of the “Orion” vehicle

Prepared by: Mustafa Al-Zoubi

The US space agency “NASA” has revealed that the “Orion” spacecraft, which will be launched to the moon next November as part of the “Artemis” mission to the moon, has passed its first water test. Cameras picked up the 11-foot-high capsule and fell about 18 inches high into the Impact Basin, a large reservoir of water at the Landing and Impact Research Facility at the Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.

And NASA said: Water impact testing is part of engineers’ efforts “to simulate certain landing scenarios from real conditions, and the moon’s first round-trip flight will be without astronauts.” “

It will be followed by a manned flight “Artemis II” in 2023, which will follow the same trajectory, but with a crew on board then “Artemis III” planned on the surface of the moon in 2024, and it will be the first manned landing in the surface of the moon since 1972 for the second man and the first woman.

Testing has been ongoing for several years, but structural improvements have since been made to the ship’s crew unit, based on previous flight tests and wind tunnel test data.

“The current tests use a new crew module configuration, which represents the final design of the spacecraft, and this dive is the first of four water tests scheduled at the facility over the next month,” said NASA said after the drop test.

The vehicle’s two boosters, which stand 177 feet tall, the equivalent of a 16-story building, will help propel astronauts to the moon for the first time in more than 50 years.

It is part of NASA’s SLS Space Launch System, the first space rocket to be built for human travel, and will produce up to 8.8 million pounds of thrust, more than any other missile in history, for generate enough energy to detonate Orion from orbit. Low ground.

The first full hot fire test of the aluminum core of the SLS was carried out last week.

The “SLS 9.1” missile costs $ 1 billion to develop, manufacture and test, and it is the only missile capable of sending “Orion” and its astronauts and supplies to the moon in a single mission.