NASA´s Space Launch System program said it has completed its Critical Design Review, and major subsystems such as Orion´s launch abort system and the SLS RS-25 engines have recently completed successful testing.
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The American space agency NASA has announced the completion of Critical Design Review (CDR) of the Orion spacecraft.
“The successes and milestones we are seeing are incredibly important steps in the development of NASA´s heavy-lift, deep space exploration vehicle”, said Charlie Precourt, vice president and general manager for Orbital ATK´s Propulsion Systems Division, and four-time space shuttle astronaut. “This rocket is the foundation of a very promising future for human spaceflight, and will take humans farther than we´ve ever gone before”. The reviews concluded that the Orion design is sufficiently mature to begin work to build and test the spacecraft for an uncrewed flight to lunar orbit in 2018. “Every aspect of the spacecraft design was closely scrutinized”.
“Lockheed Martin and NASA have completed the majority of Orion’s…” The results of the overall CDR will also be delivered to NASA’s Agency Program Management Council in the spring of 2016, the final step before the review is officially complete. Over 11 weeks, 13 teams trawled through more than 1,000 documents and over 150 GB of data before the Standing Review Board confirmed the program’s readiness and ability to meet performance, budget, and timetable requirements.
In early 2016, Orion’s crew module pressure vessel will be shipped to the Operations and Checkout Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. EM-1 will be an unmanned flight whereas the EM-2 will be a crewed mission.
Exploration Flight Test-1, or EFT-1, in December. 2014 sent Orion into space for the first time on a 4-hour, 24-minute journey that included two passes of Earth – one at an altitude of 552 miles and another at 3,604 miles.
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Orion CDR started after August 2015 with a primary focus on the EM-1 and follow-on EM-2 missions.
