Lockheed Martin engineers at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, Louisiana, perform the first weld on the Orion spacecraft pressure vessel for Exploration Mission-1 on Sept. 5, 2015. This is the third pressure Orion pressure vessel built. Engineers continue to refine the design reducing the number of welds from 33 on the first pressure vessel to 7 on the current one, saving 700 pounds of mass.
Orion will enable astronauts to travel farther into space than ever before, including to an asteroid placed in lunar orbit and on the journey to Mars. The spacecraft is designed to provide an emergency abort capability, sustain the astronauts and provide safe re-entry from deep space velocities. Orion will launch on the world’s most powerful rocket, NASA’s Space Launch System.
Image Credit:: NASA/Radislav Sinyak