Airbus’ ESM-4 ships out for Artemis IV

Copyright Airbus

While the module has left the Airbus site in Bremen, Germany, its work is just beginning. Over the next two years, it will be integrated with the Orion Crew Module, preparing to power NASA’s Artemis IV mission.

The ESM-4 is more than just hardware, it is Europe’s ticket to the future of deep space exploration. It will support astronauts living and working aboard the Gateway, humanity’s first lunar space station. By sustaining life in lunar orbit, the necessary groundwork for eventual human missions to Mars is being laid.

More than 50 years after the first crewed Moon landing in 1969, the US Space Agency NASA is setting out once again to visit Earth´s satellite – not just for a few days only but to establish the foundations for a permanently crewed human outpost in the long term. Under its Artemis programme, with its first launch in 2022, NASA is planning to return to the Moon with a landing on its surface scheduled for 2027.

Europe and Airbus are playing a major role in this ambitious project, for the first time ever, NASA has entrusted a non-US company to build a mission-critical element for a US Human Spaceflight Mission.

Under a European Space Agency (ESA) contract, Airbus is responsible for building the European Service Module (ESM), which both propels and manoeuvres the Orion spacecraft and provides the crew with water and oxygen, as well as regulating thermal control.

The Orion spacecraft consist of two main parts: the Crew Module, which is the habitat for up to four astronauts and their cargo, and the Service Module – built at the Airbus facility in Bremen. The two modules are attached and connected via the Crew Module Adapter.