Astronauts’ capsule for return to moon now at KSC

The capsule in which astronauts will ride when they return to the moon arrived at Kennedy Space Center last week.

The delivery marks a major step in NASA’s push to return humans to the moon — and eventually, Mars — as the Orion spacecraft that will take the journey nears completion.

The capsule structure will be assembled onto the full Orion spacecraft, which is under construction at the space center, for use on Orion’s first crewed mission scheduled to take place in mid-2022.

Technicians at aerospace company Lockheed Martin have been working on the capsule structure for the past seven months at the NASA Michoud Assembly Facility near New Orleans. It arrived at KSC on Friday after a nearly 700-mile ride aboard a semi-trailer, NASA said.

The capsule is designed to survive the punishing environment in deep space with seven large machined alloy pieces welded together to form an airtight capsule. The structure will hold the pressurized atmosphere where astronauts will breathe and work while on deepspace missions.

Orion, which has been in development on and off since 2004, is scheduled to launch an unmanned mission to orbit the moon in 2020, followed by a crewed mission to lunar orbit two years later. It is the only spacecraft built to travel into deep space and will one day take astronauts to a planned spaceport, the Deep Space Gateway, that will act as a jumping-off point for deepspace missions.

From the capsule structure on Orion, astronauts will one day watch the sun rise over the lunar horizon, said Matt Wallo, senior manager of Lockheed Martin Orion Production at Michoud in a news release.

“We’re all taking extra care with this build and assembly, knowing that this spaceship is going to take astronauts back to the moon for the first time in four decades,” he said.