.@LockheedMartin engineers assemble Orion's crew module at @NASAKennedy Operations and Checkout building. Orion will travel 450,000 km away from Earth on Exploration Mission-1.
A selection of more Orion EM-1 images released by Lockheed.
Meet Helga and Zohar, the dummies destined for a pioneering lunar flyby to help protect space travelers from cosmic rays and energetic solar storms.These two female phantoms will occupy the passenger seats during Orion’s first mission around the Moon, going further than any human has flown before.Fitted with more than 5600 sensors, the pair will measure the amount of radiation astronauts could be exposed to in future missions with unprecedented precision.The flight test will take place during NASA’s Exploration Mission-1, an uncrewed trip to the vicinity of the Moon and back to Earth.
The two phantoms simulate adult female torsos. Both Helga and Zohar are made up of 38 slices of tissue-equivalent plastics that mimic the varying density of bones, soft tissue and lungs. Similar dummies are used in hospitals to quantify the right dose of radiation for cancer therapies.
The only difference between the twin dummies is that Zohar will be wearing a radiation protection vest, while Helga will travel unprotected from spaceborne radiation.This vest is called AstroRad, and has been developed by a start-up company sponsored by the Israel Space Agency.
Made of polyethylene to better block harmful protons, AstroRad will cover Zohar’s upper body and uterus. Comparing the radiation dose she receives with that of Helga, scientists aim to understand how to better protect future crews.
Could you clarify for me what the European Service Module has to do with Ascent Abort flight test AA-2
Workers offload the abort motor for NASA’s Artemis 1 mission from a heavy transport truck inside the Launch Abort System Facility (LASF) at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on June 6, 2019. The abort motor, manufactured by Northrop Grumman, will be integrated with Orion subcomponents and prepared for Artemis 1. The abort motor is one of three motors located on the tower of the Launch Abort System (LAS). The LAS is designed to pull the Orion capsule and its crew away to safety if an emergency occurs during ascent of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. During Artemis 1, the uncrewed Orion spacecraft will launch atop the SLS from Launch Pad 39B at Kennedy. Orion will embark on an approximately three-week mission that will take the spacecraft thousands of miles past the Moon. Orion will return to Earth and splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California, where it will be retrieved and returned to Kennedy. Photo credit: NASA/Ben Smegelsky