Artemis 2’s Orion capsule has returned to its Florida launch site.
The spacecraft, named “Integrity,” arrived at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) on Tuesday (April 28), four weeks after launching from the facility’s Pad 39B.
De-servicing “includes removing payloads from the crew module, removing avionics boxes for reuse, and retrieving data on the spacecraft to better understand how it performed to inform procedures and plans for future Artemis missions,” NASA officials said in an April 28 statement.
“Orion‘s heat shield and other elements will be removed for extensive analysis, and remaining hazards such as excess propellant will be offloaded,” they added.
Artemis 2 launched atop a Space Launch System (SLS) rocket on April 1, sending four astronauts — NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, and the Canadian Space Agency’s Jeremy Hansen — toward the moon aboard Integrity.
The quartet flew around the moon’s far side on April 6, getting farther from Earth than any humans ever had. Integrity splashed down off the coast of San Diego on April 10, wrapping up the first crewed flight of the Artemis program and the first astronaut mission beyond Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972.
As NASA analyzes the data from Artemis 2, it’s also looking ahead to Artemis 3, a crewed mission targeted to launch in late 2027. Artemis 3 will remain in Earth orbit, testing rendezvous and docking operations between Orion and one or both of the privately developed Artemis lunar landers — SpaceX’s Starship and Blue Origin’s Blue Moon.
The top 80% of the core stage of Artemis 3’s SLS arrived at KSC from NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans on Monday (April 27). Technicians are now preparing to mate that newly arrived hardware with its engine section. And folks are working on Artemis 3’s Orion at KSC as well.
“All 186 Avcoat blocks for its upgraded heat shield have been installed, cured and inspected,” NASA officials said in the same statement.
“Teams also completed thermal cycle testing and ultrasonic inspections of the heat shield,” they added. “The Artemis 3 Orion service module has successfully undergone thermal cycle testing, deployment checks of all four solar array wings, and installation of the adapter cone that connects Orion to the SLS rocket. NASA plans to integrate the crew and service modules with the launch abort system later this year.”