The word “Airbus Group” is on a sign in front of a building at the Airbus site in Bremen. Photo: Mohsen El-San Moghaddam / dpa / archive photo
Source: dpa-infocom GmbH
NSremen (dpa) – The second European Service Module (ESM) built by Airbus for NASA’s Orion spacecraft is complete and ready for delivery. Next week, an Antonov ESM-2 cargo plane will be transported from the Airbus site in Bremen to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida (USA), Airbus announced in Bremen on Wednesday. Airbus is the main contractor selected by the European Space Agency (ESA) to develop and manufacture a total of six ESMs, the first of which will soon be launched on the Artemis I mission.
It will be the launch of Orion’s first unmanned spacecraft and will take the spaceship more than 40,000 miles beyond the moon to prove its capabilities. Artemis II will then be the first manned space mission to be operated by an ESM-2 service unit. The 13-ton unit is the heart of the new spaceship. It takes care of propulsion, power supply and thermoregulation and will provide astronauts with water and oxygen for future missions.
ESM is installed below the crew unit. Together they make up the Orion spaceship. “The delivery of the second European Service Module to NASA’s Orion spacecraft is another big step on the road to returning astronauts to the Moon,” said Andreas Hammer, Airbus’ head of space exploration. The unit is a cylinder about four meters high and wide and consists of more than 20,000 parts and components.
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