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The window cone panel is one of seven structural elements that will be welded together to form the pressure vessel of NASA\u2019s human spacecraft and one of three that AMRO manufactures.<\/p>\nThe first Orion spacecraft that will be capable of transporting NASA astronauts into deep space is now being constructed. Although it won\u2019t launch until 2022 at the earliest, the Exploration Mission -2 (EM-2) Orion structural pieces are being constructed and readied at AMRO in California ahead of a trip to the Michoud Assembly Facility (MAF) in New Orleans where they will be welded together to create the spacecraft.<\/p>\n
EM-2 Orion:<\/p>\n
As with the previous NASA crew transportation vehicle, the Space Shuttle, California is the birthplace for the EM-2 Orion, with AMRO Fabricating Corporation showing off the first structural piece of the first crewed Orion spacecraft at its facility in South El Monte, California.<\/p>\n
The window cone panel is one of seven structural elements that will be welded together to form the pressure vessel of NASA\u2019s human spacecraft and one of three that AMRO manufactures.<\/p>\n
Although the Space Shuttle was fully assembled in Palmdale, California, the panels constructed at AMRO will be shipped to the Michoud Assembly Facility (MAF) in New Orleans, Louisiana to get ready for welding.<\/p>\n
Interestingly, AMRO was also involved with the Shuttle External Tanks, which were also assembled at MAF.<\/p>\n
The window cone panel was the first structural piece completed for the Orion spacecraft that will fly Exploration Mission-2 (EM-2), which is planned to be its first crewed flight on a mission around the Moon.<\/p>\n
The cone panel is one of three that AMRO is manufacturing for each Orion crew module.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThe pressure vessel itself is seven parts, they get all welded together down at MAF,\u201d Paul Sannes, Orion Article Manager for Lockheed Martin.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThe cone which makes that traditional cone shape out of it, three pieces make that up \u2014 there\u2019s a window panel, there\u2019s a hatch panel, and then there\u2019s just a plain panel.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo when you put this thing together, that panel will come over here and it will attach to this side and then on the other side is where the hatch panel will go. Three welds and you\u2019ve got a completed cone. And then we weld that to the bulkhead, and then we weld all that to a barrel and we have a vehicle.\u201d<\/p>\n
The panels are made of an aluminum alloy, called 2219, a weldable aluminum, that was originally designed to be one of the first weldable aluminums in (its) early days, Sannes explained.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWe do not use 2050 on the outside of this vehicle, we do use aluminum lithium (alloy) in other places on the vehicle.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we put this pressure vessel together there\u2019s what we call a backbone in the bottom of it, which gives it all the strength for the heat-shield and for hitting the ocean \u2013 that structure is all made out of that aluminum lithium, so we use those materials depending on exactly what we\u2019re trying to get done, we make those selections.<\/p>\n
\u201cWeldable for the outside, high-strength for pieces on the inside that have to carry a lot of load.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sannes explained that each panel is machined and formed from large block of raw material.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt starts out life about twelve-thousand pounds and when we\u2019re all done it weighs about two-hundred, so that\u2019s all that\u2019s left of it,\u201d he said. \u201cIt started out six inches thick at the time that we started [work], 212 inches long and 108 inches wide and we formed it into that cone and then we start machining away.\u201d<\/p>\n
AMRO makes all three cone panels of the crew module pressure vessel; a second, almost complete panel was also on display at a recent event at the company\u2019s facility.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis one (the plain panel) just finished machining, it\u2019s going to go through inspection,\u201d Sannes said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019ll go through etch and dye-pen [inspections], and they\u2019ll paint it, prime it, so it\u2019ll look like [the window cone panel] without the black masks. The black masks [are] unique to the window [panels], they [have] a bunch of inserts to put in it, and then it\u2019ll be ready to go to Michoud and it\u2019ll be in a weld-ready condition.\u201d<\/p>\n
AMRO manufactures lightweight metallic structures for different aerospace applications. Among its projects, the company supplied \u2013 as noted \u2013 structures for the Space Shuttle External Tank and continues to build structures for projects such as Atlas V and the Space Launch System, in addition to Orion.<\/p>\n
Next Steps:<\/p>\n
The window cone panel shipped to MAF in August and the plain cone panel was expected to make the trip this month. The third cone panel, the hatch panel, should follow in the next month or so.<\/p>\n
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Despite the staggered shipping, work can take place on the panels as they arrive at MAF.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the things we have to do is there\u2019s instrumentation that we add during welding so that we can monitor weld shrinkage and loads induced on the part, so we\u2019ll start immediately when we them get down there instrumenting them [and] doing fit-up to the tooling, [to] make sure that everything is good, and we\u2019ll be ready for the last one when it comes down,\u201d noted Sannes.<\/p>\n
Once all the parts are at MAF, Lockheed Martin will be working to prep them for welding.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe expectation is that we\u2019ll have all seven of the parts there no later than the end of October and we should be into weld ops \u2014 and it\u2019s not welding, but weld ops and being prepped to do that \u2014 officially the first of October,\u201d Sannes added.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll get all this welded up and the expectation is that by about this time next year we\u2019ll have a fully welded pressure vessel on its way to the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) to start assembly for the manned mission.\u201d<\/p>\n
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With the delays to the EM-1 mission, it is possible that the EM-1 Orion hardware could still be in the processing area in the Operations and Checkout Facility at KSC when the EM-2 pressure vessel arrives, but Sannes also noted there\u2019s enough room there for both.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe EM-1 vehicle has got a trip up to Plum Brook [Station at NASA Glenn Research Center in Ohio] coming, which is going to be a bunch of environmental testing it\u2019s going to go through,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe vehicle [will] essentially [be] completed at that point in time, it\u2019ll come back to Kennedy [after testing] and shortly after coming back to Kennedy, we\u2019ll [turn it over] to the government and the government will take it from there, it will leave the building.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully that all fits together, but I believe that we don\u2019t have any issues with bringing [the EM-2 pressure vessel] in and processing [at the same time] because the tooling that this will go in doesn\u2019t have anything to do with what we\u2019re doing with [the EM-1] vehicle at that point in time.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo we can mix and match down there and move things around and [we] have room to do all of that.\u201d<\/p>\n
(Images via Philip Sloss at AMRO and NASA).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The first Orion spacecraft that will be capable of transporting NASA astronauts into deep space is now being constructed. Although it won\u2019t launch until 2022 at the earliest, the Exploration Mission -2 (EM-2) Orion structural pieces are being constructed and readied at AMRO in California ahead of a trip to the Michoud Assembly Facility (MAF) in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30178,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4011,7866,640],"class_list":["post-38705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-em-2","tag-maf","tag-orion"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38705"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38705\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}