TITUSVILLE, Florida, July 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — Lockheed Martin [NYSE: LMT] opened its Spacecraft Test, Assembly and Resource (STAR) Center today. The STAR Center features business and digital transformation innovations that will expand manufacturing, assembly and testing capacity for NASA’s Orion spacecraft program and ultimately, future space exploration.
Lockheed Martin currently assembles the Orion spacecraft for the Artemis I and II Moon missions at the nearby Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout (O&C) building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The addition of the STAR Center provides much-needed space for the new production phase of Orion, allowing future Orion spacecraft – starting with the Artemis III mission – to be built faster.
Lockheed Martin acquired the building that formerly housed the Astronaut Training Experience attraction and spent 18 months and nearly $20 million renovating and modernizing the 55,000 square-foot space into a digitally-transformed factory of the future.
Teams at Stennis Space Center prepare for core stage hot-fire testing ahead of Artemis I lunar mission
Boeing [NYSE: BA] today delivered the core stage of NASA’s first Space Launch System (SLS) deep space exploration rocket, moving it out of the NASA Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans to the agency’s Pegasus barge.
The event marks the first time a completed rocket stage has shipped out of Michoud since the end of the Apollo program. SLS Core Stage 1 is the largest single rocket stage ever built by NASA and its industry partners.
The rollout follows several weeks of final testing and check-outs after NASA’s declaration of “core stage complete” during a December 9 Artemis Day celebration at Michoud.
NASA will transport the SLS core stage to its Stennis Space Center in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, in the next few days for “Green Run” hot-fire engine tests later this year. After inspection and refurbishing for launch, the stage moves to Kennedy Space Center in Florida. At Kennedy, the core stage will be integrated with the Interim Cryogenic Upper Stage (ICPS) and NASA’s Orion spacecraft for the uncrewed Artemis I mission around the moon – the first launch of a human-rated spacecraft to the Moon since Apollo 17 in 1972.
“The Boeing SLS team has worked shoulder-to-shoulder with NASA and our supplier partners to face multiple challenges with ingenuity and perseverance, while keeping safety and quality at the forefront,” said John Shannon, Boeing SLS vice president and program manager.
SLS is the world’s most powerful rocket, evolvable and built to carry astronauts and cargo farther and faster than any rocket in history. Its unmatched capabilities will deliver human-rated spacecraft, habitats and science missions to the moon, Mars and beyond as part of NASA’s Artemis program.
“We are applying what we’ve learned from development of the first core stage to accelerate work on core stages 2 and 3, already in production at Michoud, as well as the Exploration Upper Stage that will power NASA’s most ambitious Artemis missions,” said Shannon.
Space Launch System Core stage 1 rollout from Michoud Assembly Facility to NASA’s Pegasus barge; for Green Run test. MSF20-0002 Series. Leanne Caret_President and CEO of Boeing Defense, Space & Security.
SEOUL, Oct 1 (Reuters) – South Korea showcased newly acquired F-35 stealth fighter jets to mark Armed Forces Day on Tuesday as President Moon Jae-in tried to allay concerns that his policy of engagement with North Korea would weaken the South’s commitment to defence.
At an event marking the founding of the South Korean military, Moon said South Korean fighter jets conducted patrol flights offshore, including over islands at the centre of a bitter territorial dispute with Japan.
North Korea has criticised the South’s weapons procurements and its joint military drills with the U.S. military as undisguised preparations for war that are forcing it to develop new short-range missiles.
Moon has thrown his support behind dialogue to end the North’s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes, urging that working-level negotiations between the North and the United States be held soon. No new dates or locations have been set.
Moon marked Armed Forces Day at a ceremony at an airbase in the city of Daegu that highlighted four of the eight Lockheed Martin F-35A jets delivered this year. Forty of the aircraft are to be delivered by 2021.
During the event, an F-15K jet patrolled over the islands claimed by both South Korea and Japan and called Dokdo in Korea and Takeshima in Japan.
Moon made no direction mention of North Korea or Japan but said today’s security climate was highly unpredictable, requiring strength and innovation.
“As the recent drone attack in the Middle East region demonstrated to the world, the challenges that we will face will be entirely different from those of the past,” he said in an address to the military. “The war of the future will be a fight of science and intelligence against all elements that threaten our people’s safety and property.”
Analysts have said the F-35 stealth jets put North Korea’s anti-aircraft and anti-missile defence systems in a vulnerable position.
Negotiations aimed at dismantling North Korea’s nuclear and missile programmes have stalled since a second summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un broke down in February over disagreements on denuclearisation.
North Korea blamed the United States on Monday for a failure to restart talks, with Pyongyang’s U.N. ambassador Kim Song saying it was time for Washington to share proposals for talks that showed Washington had adopted a new “calculation method”.
South Korea and the United States have separately begun talks for a new military burden-sharing agreement to decide how much South Korea will pay for stationing what is now about 28,500 U.S. troops in the country.
Moon told Trump during a summit in New York last week what South Korea would contribute, including an increase in purchases of U.S. weapons and future purchase plans, a senior official at South Korea’s presidential office said.
(Reporting by Joyce Lee Editing by Jack Kim, Paul Tait and Gerry Doyle)
