![\"2015-06-20-144149\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/2015-06-20-144149-350x234.jpg\")
A deal was struck back in 2012, confirming ESA\u2019s involvement \u2013 including a surprisingly large contribution from an increasingly space-friendly UK government.<\/p>\nTesting of Orion\u2019s Service Module will be conducted at NASA Glenn\u2019s Plum Brook Station this year in preparation for Exploration Mission -1 (EM-1). The Service Module is being built via the cooperation of both NASA and ESA, along with its own Shuttle heritage as a flown Orbital Maneuvering System (OMS) engine has been selected to propel Orion into deep space in 2018.\n<\/p>\n
Path To SM:<\/p>\n
The Service Module for Orion is a combination of the present, the future and the past \u2013 with a healthy dose of international cooperation.<\/p>\n
A deal was struck back in 2012, confirming ESA\u2019s involvement \u2013 including a surprisingly large contribution from an increasingly space-friendly UK government.<\/p>\n
The deal with ESA \u2013 via the use of Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) hardware \u2013 had been known within NASA for some time prior to the announcement, but had to be sanctioned by the ESA council.<\/p>\n
The arrangement is related to ESA\u2019s continued involvement \u2013 a barter agreement \u2013 with the International Space Station and allows the ATV to live on, long after its retirement from resupply runs to the orbital outpost. <\/p>\n
![\"linktoarticleplease2\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/linktoarticleplease2.gif\")
The final ATV mission to the ISS was successfully concluded earlier this year.<\/p>\n
(ATV Docking Animation created from 70 hi-res images acquired by L2 \u2013 LINK).<\/p>\n
Space Shuttle models (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});<\/p>\n Its transition to becoming part of the Orion spacecraft hasn\u2019t been plain sailing.<\/p>\n Sources continue to claim issues relating to the integration of European ATV hardware into Orion\u2019s US based development path under the stewardship of prime contract Lockheed Martin was the part of the reason EM-1 slipped from late 2017 to mid-2018.<\/p>\n EM-1 is a mission tasked with an unmanned flight 70,000 kilometers past the Moon.<\/p>\n NASA has never admitted to this, although SLS managers insist the slip wasn\u2019t specific to the launch vehicle which is still showing a path that would have allowed for a 2017 launch.<\/p>\n However, Orion marriage of international technology is a fundamental element of NASA\u2019s Beyond Earth Orbit (BEO) strategy and a requirement due to NASA\u2019s inability to \u201cgo it alone\u201d per the financial constraints on its exploration aspirations.<\/p>\n \u201cThe European Service Module (ESM) is using a number of ATV components (thruster, gas tanks, etc.) and is building on ATV heritage in terms of know-how in designing and qualifying a service module,\u201d noted Nico Dettman, head of ESA\u2019s ATV Programme Department to NASASpaceFlight.com in 2013.<\/p>\n \u201cOverall, the design of the ESM will differ in many aspects from the ATV-SM, taking into account four different design reference missions (lunar and LEO missions) including propulsive support to mission abort in certain contingency cases with a crewed capsule.<\/p>\n With the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket utilizing numerous elements of the Space Shuttle Program (SSP) \u2013 not least the RS-25 engines \u2013 there is a large amount of synergy in another orbiter engine being used on the Service Module.<\/p>\n NASA has now confirmed it has provided ESA one of the OMS pods from the Shuttle era, which sports an engine that had previously flew on 19 space shuttle missions and performed 89 burns.<\/p>\n The donated pod in question will have likely flown on one of the final missions for either Atlantis or Endeavour, as they were protected by an initial \u201cstop order\u201d on Transition and Retirement (T&R) work as a final attempt to extend Shuttle operations was evaluated.<\/p>\n When the extension was finally denied, most of the OMS hardware was decommissioned at the White Sands facility in New Mexico, where Shuttle OMS and Reaction Control System (RCS) engines were tested during the Shuttle Program era.<\/p>\n It was known that Discovery\u2019s flown OMS Pods had been decommissioned prior to the \u201cStop Order\u201d being issued, as any Shuttle extension would have utilized only Atlantis and Endeavour.<\/p>\n Orion Service Module Testing:<\/p>\n Plum Brook is the destination for numerous space destined hardware, including the testing of the large fairings that are being employed by SpaceX.<\/p>\n The test version of the crew module adapter is being built by Orion\u2019s prime contractor Lockheed Martin at the Kennedy Space Center. Other Orion hardware \u2013 such as the Crew Module \u2013 are now into the early welding work at the Michoud Assembly Facility (MAF) in New Orleans.<\/p>\n The hardware will be placed on a 22-foot-wide, 55,000-pound vibration-simulating table that was delivered in October 2014.<\/p>\n It uses four horizontal servo-hydraulic actuators and 16 vertical to vibrate the table in such a way that a spacecraft set on top of it would experience the same amount of shaking that it could expect when launching on top of a rocket.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re testing one piece at a time as we integrate the elements so we can look at our models, determine how the vehicle responded, adjust as required and perform additional tests if we need to,\u201d noted Joel Kearns, manager of the Orion Program\u2019s ESA Integration Office.<\/p>\n These test structures will be put through their paces deep into next year, prior to heading to Lockheed Martin\u2019s facility in Sunnyvale, California for additional testing.<\/p>\n Should all the testing prove to be successful, the EM-1 Service Module will be flown into KSC in January of 2017 for integration with the EM-1 Orion inside the Operations & Checkout (O&C) building, following a similar path to the EFT-1 flow.<\/p>\n However, rather than heading out to mating with its launch vehicle, the entire EM-1 spacecraft will then be shipped to Plum Brook Station for environmental testing that qualifies the vehicle for flight, and only then will it be returned to Kennedy for launch processing.<\/p>\n That will mark the launch processing flow, as the day approaches for the mating of the Orion stack with the SLS inside the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB).<\/p>\n (Images: NASA and L2 \u2013 including renders by L2 Artist Nathan Koga in the L2 Orion Update Section)<\/p>\n (Click here to join L2: http:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/l2\/ )<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Testing of Orion\u2019s Service Module will be conducted at NASA Glenn\u2019s Plum Brook Station this year in preparation for Exploration Mission -1 (EM-1). The Service Module is being built via the cooperation of both NASA and ESA, along with its own Shuttle heritage as a flown Orbital Maneuvering System (OMS) engine has been selected to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30256,"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":[3718,246,640,8966],"class_list":["post-39309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-em-1","tag-esa","tag-orion","tag-sm"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39309"}],"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=39309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39309\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}See Also<\/h4>\n
\n
![\"2015-06-20-143949\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/2015-06-20-143949-350x226.jpg\")
Orion\u2019s Service Module provides ESA with a seat at the human exploration table and avoids ATV\u2019s achievements from being retired to the history books.<\/p>\n![\"2015-06-20-024445\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/2015-06-20-024445-350x247.jpg\")
\u201cThe latter will be achieved by integrating one of the former Shuttle OMS engines.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"2015-06-20-135921\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/2015-06-20-135921-350x200.jpg\")
The OME (Orbital Maneuvering Engines) played a key role during Shuttle missions, providing a \u201ckick\u201d to the Shuttle\u2019s launch during second stage ascent, burns to specific orbital destinations and rendezvous, while providing the deorbit burn at the end of a mission.<\/p>\n![\"2015-06-20-030347\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/2015-06-20-030347-350x227.jpg\")
The test path for the Service Module highlights NASA Glenn\u2019s Plum Brook Station in Ohio, which will soon welcome a crew module adapter simulator, prior tot the arrival of a test version of the ESA SM later this year.<\/p>\n![\"2015-06-20-142302\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/2015-06-20-142302-350x261.jpg\")
The testing of the SM hardware will be conducted inside Plum Brook\u2019s Space Power Facility that can simulate launch and ascent acoustics and mechanical vibrations.<\/p>\n![\"2015-06-20-030440\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/2015-06-20-030440-350x247.jpg\")
\u201cOrion\u2019s service module is at the heart of successful future missions. It contains all the air, nitrogen and water for crews, in-space propulsion, and batteries and solar arrays to generate power, so it\u2019s an essential element of the spacecraft.\u201d<\/p>\n