The LAS ogive panels encapsulate the Orion spacecraft during launch through the atmosphere. “The tower components come through here, not the abort engines, but the tower components come through here and affiliate panels and the ogive panels, and the Motor Adapter Truss Assembly comes through Michoud.” The LAS for the mission only has a live separation motor. Unlike future Orion/SLS flights, the LAS for the Artemis I mission does not feature an active abort motor or attitude control motor. The flight included a launch using a modified first stage of the Minotaur IV from Cape Canaveral’s SLC-36 using a boilerplate Orion and a LAS. The LAS system was last tested as a whole during the Ascent Abort-2 test in 2019. The LAS is a system including solid rocket abort motors and other components, including the tower designed to safely get the Orion spacecraft and crew away from the launch vehicle in the event of a launch failure. One of these structures manufactured for Orion includes the critical Launch Abort System or LAS. “Every one of the large structures for Orion comes through Michoud for some portion of processing,” said Tim Livingston. Numerous components for launch vehicles have rolled out of the facility, including the Saturn V S-IC first stage by Boeing, the Saturn IB S-IB first stage by Chrysler, and the Space Shuttle External Tank by Martin Marietta.įor Artemis, Michoud serves as a major manufacturing and assembly site for both the core stages of the SLS and Orion. The Michoud Assembly Facility (MAF) is located in New Orleans, LA, and has been supporting NASA programs past and present since the 1960s. NASASpaceflight’s Philip Sloss recently visited the facility and interviewed Tim Livingston, an Integrated Planning Manager at Lockheed Martin. With the Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion currently at Launch Complex-39B and ready for the Artemis I launch to the moon from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC), additional work is progressing at the Agency’s Michoud Assembly Facility for other Orion spacecraft.
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