MANSFIELD, Ohio — Over the weekend, NASA's Super Guppy aircraft arrived in Mansfield with something special inside: The Orion spacecraft— an exploration vehicle that will carry a crew to space. On Monday, crews opened the Super Guppy to unload the Orion spacecraft onto a 135-foot-long truck to take it to the Plum Brook Station in Sandusky.
According to NASA, the Artemis 1 Orion spacecraft is "built to take humans farther than they’ve ever gone before. Orion will serve as the exploration vehicle that will carry the crew to space, provide emergency abort capability, sustain the crew during the space travel, and provide safe re-entry from deep space return velocities."
.@NASA’s Super Guppy is open! The Orion Spacecraft will be unloaded this morning and driven to the Plum Brook Station for 4 months of testing before its sent to the moon! pic.twitter.com/pf5FctU8NB
— Meg Shaw (@MegDShaw) November 25, 2019
Watch as crews unload the Orion from the Super Guppy.
The Orion is the largest and heaviest aircraft to have ever flown inside the Super Guppy. NASA said the Orion will spend four months at the Plum Brook Station in Sandusky while it undergoes tests.
The plan is to use the spacecraft to land the first woman on the moon by 2024.
"All of these tests are really important for making it safe to fly and safe for the crew to fly on Artemis II," said Nicole Smith, a project manager for the Orion testing.
ODOT and power crews have spent four years planing the trip to Plum Brook, replacing utility poles and mapping the route. Because the spacecraft can only move at 25 miles per hour, it's expected to take six hours traveling the 43 miles north to Sandusky.
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