MANSFIELD — In mid-November, Mansfielders may see a large unmanned space capsule being driven through its streets.
The Orion space capsule will be flown from Kennedy Space Center in Florida to Mansfield Lahm Airport before departing for Sandusky for months of testing at Plum Brook Station. That’s where the large thermal vacuum chamber creates the environment of outer space.
Jan Wittry, news chief at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland said the parts landing a Lahm will be the Orion crew capsule and its service module.
“The space craft is coming to Plum Brook Station for space environment testing in preparation for Artemis 1 which is set to launch in 2020,” she said.
According to the Canton Repository, NASA’S goal is to return to the moon by 2024 and begin long-term lunar exploration by 2028 with the hope of continuing on to Mars.
“We’ve been talking NASA for years,” said Mark Daugherty, manager at Mansfield Lahm Regional Airport, located three miles north of Mansfield. “I’ve been here for over 20 years and even then, we knew things would be coming through where we are.”
Daugherty said the airport benefits from its position in Ohio.
“What they’ll do, is they’ll bring in those components (for space travel) and bring them up to Plum Brook Station on the road for testing,” he said.
Wittry said the route the space craft will take has been determined but will not be told to the public.
The Artemis I mission will be the first launch of the Orion spacecraft on the Space Launch System rocket and not bring humans along with it to space, Wittry said.
“It’s going to be a big deal for us (being involved with the Orion project),” Daugherty said.
