Airbus provides NASA Orion with an energy unit

BERLIN (Reuters) – European Airbus has presented an "energy module" to the US Orion Space Agency, which is expected to send astronauts to the Moon and beyond in the coming years to achieve a major goal Ordering hundreds of millions euros in the future.

Engineers at the Airbus factory in Bremen, Germany, carefully placed the spacecraft Thursday in a special container, in order to transport it in a large Antonov cargo plane to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida , first step in the space.

In Florida, the unit will join the Orion crew of Lockheed Martin, followed by more than a year of intensive testing before its first mission in 2020, a three-week unmanned lunar mission.

Bill Gerstenmeier, associate director of human exploration and human operations at NASA, said the future production of the Orion and European units could give rise to new multi-billion dollar orders for businesses in the years to come. come.

"It's the system that will allow humans to move sustainably into deep space … and leave the Earth and Lunar system for the first time in their lives," he said. declared.

The current plans are to send the first human mission in 2022. NASA and ESA plan to launch a human mission a year later, giving the Orion project political and economic significance at a time when Other countries are trying to gain a foothold in space.

The European service unit produced by Airbus will pay for the electricity, energy, thermal control and consumables of Orion's crew. For the first time, NASA used a system made in Europe as a key element to power an American spacecraft.

"This is a very big step forward," said Oliver Jackenhoffel, vice president of aviation services and exploration at Airbus. The delivery and the trip to the United States are just the beginning of a journey that will eventually lead us to 100,000 km after the moon, which is beyond any distance that no one else will. never traveled before. "

The Orion probe is part of a growing effort to bring humans back to the moon because the unexpected discovery of water has stimulated scientists and rapid technological developments such as three-dimensional printing opening up the way to a lunar infrastructure.