With shiny new next-generation spacecraft come the complex systems required to track their technologically advanced systems. When it comes to NASA's Orion spacecraft, that need is a whole extra room of monitors.

NASA has opened a new complex in the Mission Control Center at its Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston ahead of the Artemis 2 mission to send astronauts around the moon aboard the Orion space capsule — the vehicle's first-ever crewed flight test. JSC's new Mission Evaluation Room (MER) will provide behind-the-scenes, in-depth data analyses of Orion to augment the in-flight operations coordinated inside the main White Flight Control Room (WFCR).

The new facility, which opened Aug. 15, will act as Orion's engineering brain trust, with 24 console stations set to be staffed 24/7 du

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