The second European service module (ESM) built by Airbus for NASA's Orion spacecraft is finished and ready for delivery. Next week, an Antonov cargo plane will fly the ESM-2 from the Airbus site in Bremen to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida (USA), as Airbus announced in Bremen on Wednesday. Airbus is the main contractor selected by the European Space Agency (ESA) for the development and manufacture of a total of six ESMs, the first of which will soon be launched on the Artemis I mission.
Bremen - The first Orion spaceship will launch without a crew and will take the spaceship more than 64,000 kilometers over the moon to demonstrate its capabilities.
Artemis II will be the first manned space mission to be powered by the ESM-2 service module.
The almost 13-ton module is the heart of the new spaceship.
It takes care of the propulsion, the energy supply and the heat regulation and will supply the astronauts with water and oxygen for future missions.
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The ESM is installed below the crew module.
Together they form the Orion spaceship.
"The delivery of the second European service module for NASA's Orion spacecraft is another big step on the way to returning astronauts to the moon," said Andreas Hammer, Head of Space Exploration at Airbus.
The module is a cylinder about four meters high and wide and consists of more than 20,000 parts and components.
dpa