The European Service Module for the crewed Artemis 2 mission to the Moon has accomplished acoustic testing in Florida.
That is the service module that might be attached to the Artemis 2 Orion capsule when it sends 4 astronauts to the Moon in late 2024. Built by the European Space Agency, it can provide power, cooling and propulsion for the mission. Acoustic testing is performed to indicate it could actually handle the pains liftoff atop a Space Launch System rocket.
“Through the testing, engineers surrounded the service module with large speakers and attached microphones, accelerometers, and other equipment to measure the results of various acoustic levels,” NASA said in a blog post.
Testing occurred on the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Constructing at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The agency said engineers and technicians still have to investigate the information collected.
The Orion capsule itself remains to be undergoing final assembly, also at Kennedy Space Center. Once accomplished, each the capsule and repair module might be integrated. This is predicted later this yr, in keeping with NASA.
Besides the Orion capsule, the one other major piece of hardware under construction for the Artemis 2 mission is the 212-foot (65-meter) tall SLS core stage. It’s currently undergoing final assembly at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in Latest Orleans.
NASA expects to ship the SLS core stage to Kennedy Space Center as soon as October. The booster segments for the rocket are also expected to reach within the second half of 2023. The agency plans to start stacking the huge rocket throughout the first half of 2024.
Artemis 2 will see NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, in addition to Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, test Orion’s systems in high Earth orbit before performing a free-return flight across the Moon. Their roughly 10-day mission is predicted to launch as early as November 2024.