NASA employees and Lockheed Martin contractors are working side by side in a revamped area of Kennedy’s Operations and Checkout Building. Their goal is to prepare NASA’s Orion spacecraft for its first launch, Exploration Flight Test-1, or EFT-1, in 2014.

Inside the Operations and Checkout Building, a birdcage tool along with work platforms surround the Orion Exploration Flight Test 1 crew module.

Read the full story here.

Image credit: NASA/Charisse Nahser

Inside the Operations and Checkout Building high bay, a technician attaches a crane to the Orion Exploration Flight Test 1 crew module so that it can be moved.

Image credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

The Orion Exploration Flight Test 1 crew module undergoes proof pressure testing at the Operations and Checkout Building.

Image credit: NASA/Ben Smegelsky

Jim Niehoff, a Mechanical Engineering Technician with the NASA Prototype Development Laboratory, is one of many Kennedy Space Center employees working alongside Lockheed Martin to ensure the future of U.S. space exploration.

Image credit: NASA/Jim Grossmann