First Piece of Artemis III Orion Delivered to NASA

Artemis III cone panel arrives at NASA Michoud Assembly Facility. 

The first piece of the Orion spacecraft’s pressure vessel for Artemis III – the mission that will land the first woman and next man on the Moon in 2024 – has arrived at NASA. The cone panel that will house the windows astronauts will use to view the Moon was designed by Orion’s lead contractor, Lockheed Martin, and manufactured by AMRO Fabricating Corp., of South El Monte, California. It arrived at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans on Aug. 21. In the coming months, the other six elements of the pressure vessel will arrive at Michoud where they will be welded together to build the underlying structure of Orion. The pressure vessel is Orion’s primary structure that holds the pressurized atmosphere astronauts will breathe and work in while in the vacuum of deep space. Orion, the Space Launch System, and Exploration Ground Systems programs are foundational elements of the Artemis program, beginning with Artemis I, the first integrated flight test of Orion and SLS next year. Artemis II will follow as the first crewed mission, taking humans farther into space than ever before.