Inside NASA’s New Orion Mission Evaluation Room for Artemis II
As NASA’s Orion spacecraft is carrying crew around the Moon on the Artemis II mission, a team of expert engineers in the Mission Control Center at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston will be meticulously monitoring the spacecraft along its journey. They’ll be operating from a new space in the mission control complex built to host the Orion Mission Evaluation Room (MER). Through the success of Orion and the Artemis missions, NASA will return humanity to the Moon and prepare to land an American on the surface of Mars.
Inside the Mission Evaluation Room, dozens of engineers will be monitoring the spacecraft and collecting data, while the flight control team located in mission control’s White Flight Control Room is simultaneously operating and sending commands to Orion during the flight. The flight control team will rely on the engineering expertise of the evaluation room to help with unexpected spacecraft behaviors that may arise during the mission and help analyze Orion’s performance data.
The Mission Evaluation Room team is made up of engineers from NASA, Lockheed Martin, ESA (European Space Agency), and Airbus who bring deep, expert knowledge of the spacecraft’s subsystems and functions to the mission. These functions are represented across 24 consoles, usually staffed by two engineers in their respective discipline, often hosting additional support personnel during planned dynamic phases of the mission or test objectives.
“The operations team is flying the spacecraft, but they are relying on the Mission Evaluation Room’s reachback engineering capability from the NASA, industry, and international Orion team that has designed, built, and tested this spacecraft.”
Trey PerrymAn
Lead for Orion Mission and Integration Systems at NASA Johnson
Perryman guides the Artemis II Orion mission evaluation room alongside Jen Madsen, deputy manager for Orion’s Avionics, Power, and Software.
With crew aboard, Orion will put more systems to the test, requiring more expertise to monitor new systems not previously flown. To support these needs, and safe, successful flights of Orion to the Moon, NASA officially opened the all-new facility in mission control to host the Orion Mission Evaluation Room on Aug. 15.
During Artemis II, the evaluation room will operate in three daily shifts, beginning about 48 hours prior to liftoff. The room is staffed around the clock throughout the nearly 10 day mission, up until the spacecraft has been safely secured inside the U.S. Navy ship that will recover it after splashdown.
Another key function of the evaluation room is collecting and analyzing the large amount of data Orion will produce during the flight, which will help inform the room’s team on the spacecraft’s performance.
“Data collection is hugely significant,” Perryman said. “We’ll do an analysis and assessment of all the data we’ve collected, and compare it against what we were expecting from the spacecraft. While a lot of that data comparison will take place during the mission, we’ll also do deeper analysis after the mission is over to see what we learned.”
If unplanned situations arise during the mission, the Mission Evaluation Room has additional layers of ability to support any specific need that presents itself. This includes various engineering support from different NASA centers, Lockheed Martin’s Integrated Test Lab, ESA’s European Space Research and Technology Center, and more.
“It’s been amazing to have helped design and build Orion from the beginning – and now, we’ll be able to see the culmination of all those years of work in this new Mission Evaluation Room.”
Jen Madsen
Deputy Manager for Orion’s Avionics, Power, and Software
“We’ll see our spacecraft carrying our crew to the Moon on these screens and still be continuously learning about all of its capabilities,” said Madsen.
The Artemis II test flight will send NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen around the Moon and return them safely back home. This first crewed flight under NASA’s Artemis campaign will set the stage for NASA to return Americans to the lunar surface and help the agency and its commercial and international partners prepare for future human missions to Mars.
