Building the module in New Orleans

According to NASA, Lockheed Martin built the Orion crew module ground test article, seen here in the foreground, at the NASA Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans. "The vehicle will serve as a production pathfinder to validate the flight vehicle production processes and tools. When completed, this first full-sized, flight-like crew module will be tested on the ground in equivalent flight-like environments, including static vibration, acoustics and water landing loads. Results will be used to correlate sizing models for all subsystems on the vehicle."