Welding Begins on Orion Pathfinder.

On May 7, engineers at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans began welding together the first pieces of the structure of the Orion crew module pathfinder. This pathfinder is a full-scale version of the current spacecraft design. It is used to demonstrate the manufacturing and assembly procedures that will be used to produce the actual flight hardware. Using a pathfinder allows engineers to make sure those procedures work correctly and to improve the process before producing the flight article. This pathfinder will help NASA prepare for Orion’s next mission to deep space atop the agency’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. The elements of the hardware that will actually fly on Exploration Mission (EM)-1 will be joined this summer.
Source: NASA.

 

The aluminum forward bulkhead for the Orion crew module pathfinder.

Credits: Lockheed Martin