Before the first woman and next man set foot on the lunar surface, Orion will carry the crew from Earth to the vicinity of the Moon and dock with a commercially built human landing system or the international Gateway.
To prepare for crucial docking and undocking operations in lunar orbit, astronauts and Orion engineers have begun the first series of human-in-the-loop testing at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
On March 5, technicians and astronaut Don Pettit tested the crew’s ability to perform Orion docking tasks inside a rotating docking tunnel mockup. The newly constructed tunnel can rotate 360-degrees, allowing for evaluation of a variety of orientations and angles Orion will experience in deep space.
Pettit also performed a series of tasks, including removing the mockup’s hatch and docking camera to allow travel through Orion into the docked vehicle. The hardware was then reinstalled to simulate preparation for Orion’s undocking.
Orion, the Space Launch System (SLS), Exploration Ground Systems programs, and the Gateway are foundational elements of the Artemis program. Artemis I will be the first integrated flight test of Orion and SLS and is targeted to launch later this year. Artemis II will follow and is the first crewed mission, taking humans farther into space than ever before.