About 10 technicians and quality inspectors with Arctic Slope Regional Corporation have begun bonding approximately 1300 thermal protection tiles onto panels of NASA's Orion spacecraft to preserve the capsule and its future crew through the reentry inferno.The workers,veterans of the Space Shuttle programme's tile-bonding process,will bond each silica tile to the nine Orion side panels or the forward bay cover.Orion also has a massive heat shield for protection.Before bonding,each tile is scanned for conformity with Orion prime contractor Lockheed Martin's design information for the particular tile.
The work,which will take several months to complete,is being done in the high bay of the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building,Kennedy Space Center,a facility serving as the preparatory nerve center for Orion's first mission atop the new Space Launch System rocket,Exploration Mission-1.This second uncrewed mission,following the successful first one on 5 December 2014 and scheduled for 30 September 2018,will see Orion sent far beyond where any other human-rated spacecraft has traveled before,some 40,000 miles above the Moon,on a three-week journey to gather spacecraft performance data and qualify Orion for the human spaceflight to occur on its next mission,EM-2 in 2023.The silvery-looking aluminised tiles will be installed on the Orion crew module before mating with the ESA Orion Service Module.
Beneath the silvery coating will be the same Toughened Uni-Piece Fibrous Insulation,or TUFI,used in the closing missions of the Space Shuttle era.Unlike the shuttle's tiles,however,Orion's will not be reusable,as salt water contaminates them upon splashdown.*
Orion's reentry to the Earth's atmosphere will be at about 25,000 miles an hour and 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit.While many of the tiles are a standard 8x8 inches;others are odd-shaped to fit around windows,thrusters and antennae.*
ASRC Federal delivers aviation,space and missile defence,base and range operations and maintenance services to the US Government.The company is owned by the Innupiaq people of Alaska's North Slope.*
Lockheed Martin (LMT)
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