Arrival to Bremen

The structure for Europe’s second service module for NASA’s Orion spacecraft arrived at the Airbus clean room in Bremen, Germany, on 28 April. 

Technicians started working on installing over 12 km of cables, fuel, water and air tanks, computers, engines and everything else that is needed to support astronauts further from Earth than any human being has been before.

Engineers at Thales Alenia Space in Turin, Italy, packed the “chassis” for its transport earlier this month. This is the real thing – its trip from Turin to Bremen is the start of a voyage that will see the Orion spacecraft launched beyond the Moon before completing a lunar flyby and returning to Earth.

The European Service Module is a crucial element of Orion, providing support to the crew module that will house up to four astronauts. The crew will travel over one million kilometres in total.