Airbus Provides Central Station to NASA's Orion Spacecraft

BERLIN – The European Airbus Friday delivered the "power station" of NASA's new Orion spacecraft, which will take astronauts to the moon and beyond in the years to come, marking a milestone that should lead to hundreds millions of euros of future orders.

Engineers at the Airbus plant in Bremen, Germany, 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, the first step towards space.

In Florida, the module will be paired with the Orion crewing module built by Lockheed Martin, followed by more than a year of intensive testing before the launch of the first three-week mission around the moon in 2020, although that it is without personnel.

The future production of Orion and the European module could generate billions of dollars in new orders for companies involved in the coming years, said Bill Gerstenmaier, associate director of human exploration and operations for The NASA.

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

The current plans are for a first crewed mission in 2022, but NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) then plan to launch a human mission each year, giving the Orion project political and economic significance, at a time when China and other countries are gaining footholds in space.

The Airbus European Service Module will provide propulsion, power, thermal control and consumables to the Orion Crew Module. This is the first time that NASA will use a European construction system as an essential element to power an American spacecraft.

"It's a very big step. The delivery and the flight to America are just the beginning of a journey that will take us 100,000 miles beyond the moon, further than any human being ever flown before, "Oliver said. Juckenhoefel, Vice President of On-Orbit and Exploration Services at Airbus. , told Reuters.

Orion is part of a growing initiative to put humans back on the moon, where the unexpected discovery of water has stimulated scientists, with rapid technological developments such as 3D printing leading the way to moon-based infrastructures, such as data server relay stations. years to come.

"It sounds like science fiction, but I'm sure it will happen and the only question for us in Europe is whether we want to be part of it or not," Juckenhoefel said. "In the industry, we must be careful not to miss the boat."

NASA's Gerstenmaier said ESA wanted to participate in a "lunar bridge" to put humans back on the moon around 2028 and build a base for journeys to Mars and other parts of the world. -of the.

Airbus won a $ 446.12 million contract for the construction of the first ESM module in 2014 and is working on a second order valued at 200 million euros. Juckenhoefel is negotiating with ESA for new orders of up to one billion euros.

Mike Hawes, who leads the $ 11 billion Orion program for Lockheed, emphasized the importance of this program for future deep space exploration.

He added that Lockheed was negotiating with NASA a maximum of 12 additional missions that could generate billions of dollars in new orders while halving the cost of future spacecraft.