Nasa uses European Airbus technology to get to the Moon and beyond
Nasa’s new Orion spaceship is part of a push to put humans back on the Moon, where the discovery of water has energised scientists
Berlin — Europe’s Airbus said on Friday that it had delivered the “powerhouse” for Nasa’s new Orion spaceship that will take astronauts to the Moon and beyond in the coming years, hitting a key milestone that should lead to hundreds of millions of euros in future orders. On Thursday, engineers at the Airbus plant in Bremen, Germany carefully packed the spacecraft into a special container that will fly aboard a huge Antonov cargo plane to Nasa’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, a first step on its way to deep space. In Florida, the module will be joined with the Orion crew module built by Lockheed Martin, followed by more than a year of intensive testing before the first three-week mission orbiting the Moon is launched in 2020, albeit without people. Current plans call for a first crewed mission in 2022, but Nasa and the European Space Agency (ESA) then plan to launch a manned mission every year, making the Orion project both politically and economically important at a time when Chin...
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