Bremen-USA space: Service module for spaceship ready to go

On his first flight he doesn't go to the moon yet, but crosses the Atlantic to the USA.

The heart of the Orion spaceship - the ESM service module - is eagerly awaited there.

Bremen - After around four years of construction, the second European Service Module (ESM) built by Airbus for NASA's Orion spacecraft is ready for transport to the US state of Florida. The 13-tonne cylindrical high-tech module was loaded into an Antonov wide-body aircraft on Wednesday night, which is to bring the cargo from Bremen to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The departure was planned around 9:00 a.m.

The module consists of more than 20,000 parts and components and provides the drive, energy supply and heat regulation.

In addition, the module will provide water and oxygen for the astronauts on future missions.

It can also carry consumables that the astronauts need to survive.

The ESM is installed below the crew module.

Both together form the Orion spaceship.

“That is a big milestone.

We are all very relieved, ”said Rachid Amekrane, Space Manager at Airbus Defense and Space.

The ESM-2 module has been worked on since 2017 "with a lot of passion".

Artemis I is the first unmanned Orion test flight with a European service module and is scheduled to start in the first quarter of 2022.

Later, as part of Artemis II, the first astronauts will fly around the moon and back to earth.

Artemis III plans to land on the moon with astronauts by 2024.

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Orion is NASA's spacecraft that is intended to take astronauts to the moon and to the so-called Lunar Gateway, a planned space station, as part of the Artemis program.

Airbus is initially building a total of six service modules for the mission.

dpa