NASA Invites Media to See Astronauts' Windows on the Universe

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Aug 07, 2017, 10:41 ET

HOUSTON, Aug. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Media are invited to see the first completed structural piece of NASA's Orion spacecraft that will send astronauts beyond the moon, at AMRO Fabricating Corp., in South El Monte, California, on Wednesday, Aug. 9 at 11 a.m. PDT.

The completed piece includes the frame for the windows through which crew will view the moon and Earth from their deep-space vantage point on Exploration Mission-2 in the early 2020s.

The panel of Orion’s underlying structure for Exploration Mission-2 containing the spacecraft’s windows is manufactured by AMRO Fabricating Corp., in South El Monte, California. Credit: AMRO.

Leaders developing Orion and NASA Astronaut Lee Morin will be available for interviews.

U.S. media interested in participating must contact Laura Kinto at [email protected] by noon on Tues., Aug. 8. International media accreditation for this event is closed but phone interviews can be accommodated. AMRO is located at 1430 Adelia Ave. in South El Monte.

AMRO is manufacturing three of the seven sections that make up the Orion pressure vessel, the underlying structure of the crew module that will house astronauts during their deep space missions in the spacecraft. The completed window panel will be shipped in the coming weeks to NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans in preparation for welding with other sections. AMRO also fabricates several sections of the core stage for NASA's powerful Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. More than 350 small businesses and companies across California have supported the Orion program since its inception, and more than 600 suppliers in the state support NASA's deep space exploration programs.

Orion and SLS are two of the foundational elements of NASA's new exploration systems that will send humans on a series of missions beyond the moon. Orion's first crewed mission will take humans farther into space than ever before.

For more information about Orion, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/orion

For Astronaut Lee Morin's biography, visit:

https://go.nasa.gov/2hoJWdl

SOURCE NASA