Lockheed Martin ramps up assembly of Orion capsules that will carry astronauts back to the moon
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/lockheed-martin-orion-moonship-assembly-operations/
Assembly of the Orion capsules that will carry astronauts back to the moon in NASA's Artemis program is ramping up as initial test flights draw near, prompting spacecraft builder Lockheed Martin to take over a former Space Camp facility to expand and modernize production.
The new Spacecraft Test, Assembly and Resource (STAR) Center, dedicated Thursday, will be used to assemble Orion components that up to now primarily have been built in the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building at the nearby Kennedy Space Center.
The STAR facility will use state-of-the-art cloud-based computing systems allowing managers and engineers at either work site to access the same shared databases for real-time collaboration, including the use of virtual reality in assembly tasks.
"This is a way of automating information flow and dynamic use of that information across the full spectrum," Rick Ambrose, executive vice president of Lockheed Martin Space, said in an interview. "Let's say they need an engineer in Denver (who) could design (an electrical) harness. It would electronically then flow in and actually control the machine that starts to produce it in the STAR Center."
