WIKIARCHIVES.SPACE

Inside the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building high bay at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, a crane removes the top of the shipping container carrying the Orion heat shield for Exploration Mission 1 (EM-1). The heat shield arrived aboard the agency’s Super Guppy aircraft at the Shuttle Landing Facility, managed and operated by Space Florida, from Lockheed Martin’s manufacturing facility near Denver. The heat shield will be offloaded and moved into the high bay for processing. The Orion spacecraft will launch atop NASA’s Space Launch System rocket on EM-1, an uncrewed test flight, in 2018.