ESA

An artist's conception shows ESA's service module directly below NASA's Orion crew capsule.

By Alan Boyle

NASA and the European Space Agency have signed an agreement calling for the Europeans to provide the service module for the Orion space capsule, the U.S. space agency's crew vehicle for exploration beyond Earth orbit.

The hardware would provide the Orion withpropulsion, power, thermal control and basic supplies such as water and breathable air. ESA said the design will be based on that of the ATV supply ships that are currently being sent to the International Space Station.

"ATV has proven itself on three flawless missions to the space station, and this agreement is further confirmation that Europe is building advanced, dependable spacecraft," Nico Dettmann, head of the ATV's production program, said in an ESA statement.

The Orion's first test flight is scheduled for 2014, using a test service module built by Lockheed Martin. That unmanned launch would send the Orion to an altitude of 3,600 miles (5,800 kilometers). The European-built service module would get its first in-space tryout along with the Orion capsule and heavy-lift Space Launch System rocket in 2017, during an unmanned test flight that would go around the moon and back.

"This is not a simple system," Orion program manager Mark Geyer said in a NASA statement. "ESA's contribution is going to be critical to the success of Orion's 2017 mission."

The first flight with astronauts aboard would follow a round-the-moon route in 2021, and ESA will provide components for that flight as well.

NASA's current exploration plan calls for the Orion-SLS system to send humans to a near-Earth asteroid in the mid-2020s, and to Mars and its moons in the 2030s. Meanwhile, the task of sending cargo and crew to the International Space Station would be left to commercial spaceship providers.

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Europeans to build key piece of NASA spaceship