Orion Ground Test Article
November 3, 2009
Lockheed Martin is building an Orion crew module Ground Test Article at the NASA Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, La. in the same factory that developed Apollo's Saturn launch vehicles and the external tank for the space shuttle fleet. The ground test article appears in the foreground of this overall scene. The vehicle will serve as a production pathfinder to validate the flight vehicle production processes and tools. When completed, this first full-sized, flight-like crew module will be tested on the ground in equivalent flight-like environments, including static vibration, acoustics and water landing loads. Results will be used to correlate sizing models for all subsystems on the vehicle.
Topics:
Project Constellation, Manned spacecraft, Human spaceflight, Disaster Accident, Ares I-X, Boilerplate, Apollo spacecraft, Apollo program, Michoud Assembly Facility, Space Shuttle, Orion, NASA Michoud Assembly Facility, New Orleans, Apollo, National Aeronautics and Space Administration
