Inside the Multi-Payload Processing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, engineers and technicians opened the hatch of the Orion spacecraft for the Artemis I mission after a 1.4-million mile journey beyond the Moon and back. Orion returned to Kennedy on Dec. 30, 2022, after splashing down in the Pacific Ocean on Dec. 11.
In this photo, a technician stands inside the crew module to remove payloads and assess the capsule. The team has removed all of the purposeful passengers and zero gravity indicator Snoopy, and moved them to labs inside one of Kennedy’s processing facilities. While Artemis I did not have crew on board, the three human-like payloads on Artemis I will help scientists and engineers understand how to best protect astronauts on future Artemis missions to the Moon.
This week technicians will extract nine avionics boxes from the Orion, which will subsequently be refurbished for Artemis II, the first mission with astronauts. Contents include a video processing unit, GPS receiver, four crew module phased array antennas, and three Orion inertial measurement units. The crew seat that Commander Moonikin Campos occupied on Artemis I will also be refurbished for flight on Artemis II.
In the coming months, technicians will remove hazardous commodities that remain on board. Once complete, the spacecraft will journey to NASA Glenn’s Neil A. Armstrong Test Facility for abort-level acoustic vibration and other environmental testing.