More Costly Trade: Airbus wins contract for US space capsule Orion

[grahamhgreen]

(Reuters) - Airbus Group will develop and build a service module for the future American human space capsule, Orion, marking the first time a European firm will provide system-critical elements for a U.S. space project, it said on Monday.

Europe's largest aerospace group said the contract, signed with the European Space Agency, was worth around 390 million euros ($488 million).

The contract comes days after European scientists celebrated landing a probe on the surface of a comet for the first time.

NASA intends to use Orion to fly astronauts to an asteroid that has been robotically relocated into a high orbit around the moon. Eventually, the U.S. space agency wants to fly a four-member crew to Mars.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/17/us-airbus-group-space-usa-idUSKCN0J11F320141117

[burrowowl]

1. Well, they seem to be competent

enough! Hell, mating with the space lab will be kid's play compared to landing on a comet.

[stevenleser]

2. Slightly misleading title and article. Airbus won the deal to design an attached module

not the capsule. The crew quarters themselves, the main part of the Orion capsule was already built and designed by Lockheed Martin

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_(spacecraft)#Design