NASA transports its Mars crew capsule in the belly of a really weird cargo plane
NASA's Orion capsule — the spacecraft that could one day take humans to Mars — is going on an important flight today. Unfortunately it's not into space. Instead, the main structure of the vehicle is being transported from the Michoud Assembly Facility in Louisiana, where the capsule was built, to Kennedy Space Center in Florida. That's where it will live until it goes on its first uncrewed test flight on top of NASA's next big rocket, the Space Launch System.
The Orion has a special ride to Kennedy called the Super Guppy. It's a giant transport plane NASA uses to lug around big cargo. Shaped like, well, a guppy, the plane is able to carry loads that weigh up to 26 tons in a cargo hold that has up to 39,000 cubic feet of usable space. NASA's Super Guppy was originally used to transport parts needed to form the International Space Space Station; the plane would carry the pieces to the sites they'd eventually launch from. Now, NASA keeps it on hand to carry oversized cargo, and the Orion definitely fits the bill, measuring about 10 feet tall and 16.5 feet in diameter.
Read more »