Lockheed Martin Opens Advanced Manufacturing Facility to Expand Orion Spacecraft Production
TITUSVILLE, Fla. (Lockheed Martin PR) — 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.
“The STAR Center is a spacecraft factory of the future and is the centerpiece of our commitment to build sustainable and affordable capabilities for NASA to send astronauts to explore the Moon and eventually Mars,” said Lisa Callahan, Commercial Civil Space vice president and general manager at Lockheed Martin Space. “We are using advanced manufacturing capabilities and digital-first technologies to speed production and improve quality to get Orion from factory to space faster than ever before.”
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.
Digital Transformation Means Efficiencies
The STAR Center showcases Lockheed Martin’s ability to implement the latest digital transformation technologies, along with the company’s existing production expertise, to scale Orion production and deliver spacecraft faster than ever before.
Those include integrating the STAR Center into Lockheed Martin’s Intelligent Factory Framework (IFF),an edge computing platform that secures, scales and standardizes device connectivity through various IT platforms. This digital-first approach streamlines production and maximizes agility by connecting devices virtually. Lockheed Martin has already deployed IFF to seven locations and is scaling across the entire company.
In addition, more than 30 machines at the STAR center will be connected to this IFF, as well as machines at NASA’s O&C, giving all production team members at both facilities real-time access to valuable data. The center also employs remote access, monitoring and alerting technologies for equipment, plus smart tools such as virtual reality and augmented reality.
Room to Grow
Under Lockheed Martin’s production contract with NASA, the agency has committed to order Orion vehicles for six missions, with the potential to add another six through 2030.
Elements of the spacecraft that take large amounts of floor space and that are built and tested outside the normal spacecraft assembly flow will be moved to the STAR Center. This gives production teams more room at the O&C facility to assemble and test more Orion spacecraft simultaneously and quicker.
Production activities include:
- Assembly and test of Orion aeroshell heat shield and backshell panels, including thermal protection system installation
- Crew module and crew module adapter wire harness fabrication and testing
- Propulsion and environmental control and life support systems assembly and testing
- Electrical ground support equipment production.
About Lockheed Martin
Headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, Lockheed Martin Corporation is a global security and aerospace company that employs approximately 114,000 people worldwide and is principally engaged in the research, design, development, manufacture, integration and sustainment of advanced technology systems, products and services.
28 responses to “Lockheed Martin Opens Advanced Manufacturing Facility to Expand Orion Spacecraft Production”
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…Under Lockheed Martin’s production contract with NASA, the agency has committed to order Orion vehicles for six missions, with the potential to add another six through 2030…
Looks like Orion will be with us for awhile. Meanwhile…first hot fire test of Super Heavy yesterday at Starbase, TX . Let the games begin!
What are the budget set asides for Cancellation Again?
Good question. But I’ll be surprised if Orion gets cancelled any time soon.
Maybe not soon, and maybe not due to Musk inc, but it’s hard for me to see twelve flights. and lasting into the 2030s. Once again there seems to be a private space ground swell coming, and I believe there is more $ub$tance to this one than in the 90s.
Yeah. I’m guessing it’s gonna be “six and nix”.
Or <6 and nix.
I guess their back-stop argument is that they’re funding it “just in case the private sector fails, as has happened before (e.g. Beal)”. However, the idea of SpaceX folding anytime soon looks more and more like wishful thinking with every successful Falcon launch (F9 and FH)… and that’s ignoring the paradigm shifting potential of Starship/SuperHeavy!
May be a nonsequitur, the low flight rate of FH to date seems to indicate that demand for heavy lift is not quite as urgent as some believe. I was involved in an argument a few years back with people insisting that FH had to be cheaper than F9. Which seems to be falsified by Starlink going exclusively on the F9.
Starship may be the paradigm shift, or it may stumble with smaller, more agile vehicles eating its’ lunch. I still remember a talk at Space Access by you saying that extraordinary vehicles did not require extraordinary markets. I believe your example was that two capable five tonners with orbital refueling could do the job of a ten tonner without having to develop the ten ton. And they would be responsive to the smaller more frequent missions. By that reasoning, if larger missions take considerable time to ramp up, and Starship misses its’ price point, Starship could be a technical success without being a business success.
Odd to find myself being the skeptic. I have some concern for the unk unks, and am grateful that my fears have no bearing on Starship development.
I’m amazed you remember that presentation: Henry put me on so late at night most people had left or were falling asleep… I think I may have, too 🙂
Seriously though, it’s easy to show how market demand can be addressed by alternate vehicles/missions if you ignore the ‘cost’ of those alternates, which includes the market’s trust in your ability to deliver that service. Personally, I’m a great believer in Darwinian evolution and think any future successes and failures will be predicated upon factors we’re effectively unaware of today.
I’m therefore sure that small systems can compete successfully with large systems *if* the right markets and technologies are realized… which also suggests that both could co-exist successfully, given the right conditions.
That seems to be Astra’s notion. It’s looking to optimize capability vs. cost for low-end rockets that can be cranked out very inexpensively. That might work, even in a world where Starship dominates launch in general.
One big unknown is the cost per kilogram to LEO for the Falcon 9 versus the Falcon Heavy. Note, not the published price but the actual cost. My guess is the savings for Starlink is not worth it.
The low flight rate for FH is because it was developed to serve the market for large satellites to Geosynchronous orbit, and there just isn’t that much of a market for it, especially as the government and other users want to keep multiple launch options available and as a market it is not that price sensitive.
Lowest cost to orbit is only one of a number of factors in the decision model for buying launch services.
FH has better economics/kg. to LEO than F9, but is volume-limited by its current fairing for many such potential missions, including Starlink.
Improvements to Falcon 9 sort of froze Falcon Heavy out of the Geosat market. But other markets for Falcon Heavy seem wide open.
I suspect the military launch market for Falcon Heavy will be very very profitable for SpaceX.
Falcon Heavy is also becoming the de facto NASA launch vehicle for many beyond LEO mission too.
SLS delenda est
The Starlink loads that fly on F9 are mass-limited by the performance of the vehicle, but are also occupying essentially all the usable space in the fairing. FH flies with the same fairing. So, until the new fairing is in service, it would make no sense to launch Starlinks on FH. And, if Starship is able to do Starlink launches by the time the new FH fairing is in service, it may never make sense to launch Starlinks on FH.
The problem with Beal was that he was a banker and listened to the wrong folk who convinced him he could not launch from the U.S. He wasted his effort looking in all the wrong places for a launch site. Steve Woznaik showed more promise with Robert Truax’s Dophine, but lost interest after his accident. But he did demonstrate it works with that single launch. Space Services suffered a major setback when its principle financier died on the very morning it had its first successful launch, the first for a private rocket on September 9, 1981 from the Matagorda Island launch site.
The current round has lots more money and corporations with contracts making such failure much less likely.
The fact that NASA was forced to quit actively trying to kill off private sector space launch companies after the Columbia disaster in 2003 is the biggest difference between now and the 80s and 90s.
Yes, got to keep the Pork flowing even if they never fly…
Orion vs. Starship. Congressional graft vs. SpaceX’s grit. Wadda show this is gonna be.
Yes it will. And it looks like the Masters of Pork are getting desperate.
https://arstechnica.com/sci…
An Alabama lawmaker just wants NASA to fly SLS, doesn’t care about payloads
“The mission for which is to be determined by the NASA Administrator.”
Eric Berger – 7/16/2021, 3:29 PM
Yeah. Just another Alabama politician doing his part for the cause. But this time his amendment got shot down. Looks like the first crack in the dike to me.
Yep, it just like the government was shamed into giving the military money to build better fighters when the commercial airlines started flying planes that could easily outrun their old biplane fighters.
They should lock a team in a room to build a Super Heavy adapter for Orion and EUS. Maybe then it could actually get to LLO ? ?
Easier to just stick it inside the cargo faring of a Starship cargo rocket. Than they could actually deliver it to LLO.
Wikipedia still says that Orion capsules will be reused. It cites a space.com article for 2013, which is quite old. The list of vehicles on Wikipedia doesn’t seem to show any reuse of capsules, but it only goes to Artemis 3.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
Does anyone know if NASA is still planning on reusing Orion capsules? The handful of NASA web pages about Orion that I visited today don’t mention capsule reuse.
Really, The reuse of the Orion Capsules would be just too dangerous – to the Pork Flow. Best to ship off the used ones to museums to put next to the old fabric biplanes that the government was flying long after the airlines upgraded to metal monoplanes for speed and safety.
The last mention I can remember…several years ago…was that Orion COULD be reused…if NASA was willing to foot the bill for the upgrade.
I think reusability is part of an extra-cost option package that includes heated seats, electric windows and deluxe trim.
Don’t know about that, but I did find this interesting tidbit over at the Lockheed-Martin website…
Ouch! That’s expensive.
Reuse of capsules, rather than building more at half a billion each, seems like it would be a lot better bargain for NASA.
SLS delenda est