The Orion stage adapter flight hardware for NASA's Space Launch System has been outfitted and is ready to travel to the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, via NASA's Super Guppy.
The Orion stage adapter flight hardware for NASA’s Space Launch System has been outfitted and is ready to travel to the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, via NASA’s Super Guppy. The adapter, built at the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, will join Orion to the rocket’s interim cryogenic propulsion stage — a liquid oxygen/liquid hydrogen-based in-space stage that will give the spacecraft the push needed to go to deep space. The square boxes inside the adapter are mounting spaces for 13 small satellites that will ride to space in the adapter and then deploy on their own deep space missions.
Image Credit: NASA/MSFC/Tyler Martin