The Orion capsule, which was successfully launched by the SLS rocket, has begun its long 26-day journey to the moon and back, but Orion is NOT a new capsule and it is not the first time it has flown. In 2014, it reached space, but with a mission that lasted only a few hours, at a time when NASA’s plans were different than they are now.

The capsule was built by Lockheed Martin, and the service module (called the European Service Module) by Airbus Defense and Space. Orion has room for six astronauts, but has yet to send humans into space.

In 2018, a detail was added that would have made the Artemis 1 mission impossible: the European Service Module (ESM) was built primarily by Airbus and provides propulsion, electrical backup, thermal control, and all the gas and water needed to keep the astronauts on board in alive when the missions are manned.

• After weeks of technical problems and hurricanes, NASA launched the most powerful rocket in history

After four years of work on this European module, there was pressure to meet delivery deadlines, and the ESM was shipped to the US in November 2018 from Bremen, Germany, on a Russian Antonov cargo plane.

But back to Orion.

Orion arrived in space in 2014, but did not stay there for long, the mission lasted only 4 and a half hours. The capsule, launched by the Delta IV Heavy rocket, reached an altitude of 5,800 km above the Earth and also made two revolutions around the Earth.

The height reached was impressive: it was the furthest point reached by a human-made spacecraft since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. In fact, Orion reached 15 times farther from Earth than the International Space Station.

Orion was successfully tested in 2014, re-entering the atmosphere at a speed of 32,000 km/h, and the heat shield withstood 2,200 C. The parachutes designed to slow the craft worked very well.

Eight years ago, Orion was slated to make another unmanned test flight in 2018 and carry astronauts into space in 2021. Since then, there have been talks about the need to create an SLS rocket in a decent time, but now, almost a decade later, the SLS made its first flight. Eight years ago, the most optimistic people believed that the SLS would be ready in 2017 or 2018…

In 2014, NASA wanted to “grab” an asteroid with a robotic arm sometime around 2025, put it into Earth orbit in Orion, and have astronauts manually collect samples from the asteroid.

Sources: Washington Post, BBC, NASA