NASA technicians did some testing on Orion’s solar array wing to make sure it worked properly for the Artemis II mission. This mission is all about proving that human beings are capable of traveling long distances in space with a 10-day flight test around the Moon.
NASA needs to make sure that the Orion spacecraft for the Artemis II mission opens and closes its solar array wings properly. On March 17, 2023, technicians checked one of these wings in Kennedy Space Center’s Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building. They made sure everything worked right.
Orion will have four special ‘solar wings’ that collect 11,000 watts of energy from the Sun. This energy is used for making the spacecraft fly, keeping it cool and supplying electricity. These solar panels will be installed on the Service Module which is built by Airbus and provided by ESA (European Space Agency). The Service Module also gives all the astronauts oxygen, water and nitrogen – things they need to stay alive.
NASA is planning a space mission called Artemis II, which will send four astronauts (Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Hammock Koch and Jeremy Hansen) to circle the Moon for 10 days. It will launch on NASA’s Space Launch System rocket and test Orion’s life support systems so that humans can later live and work in space more easily.
You can watch a video of teams putting up the solar panel here. They did it in a short amount of time — like magic!
NASA built a special spaceship called the Orion which has been made to send humans to outer space safely. Its mission is to bring astronauts up into space, be their escape in case of emergencies, keep crew members comfortable during their trip and also make sure it’s stable when entering back into Earth at really high speeds. The spacecraft is going to be attached to NASA’s latest rocket known as the Space Launch System.
