Huge speakers are soon going to pummel a spaceship in Littleton with powerful sound waves. The procedure might sound aggressive to some but it is actually a real-life technology called direct field acoustic (DFA).

DFA is a recently developed method that tests how well structures can withstand various sound pressure fields. The test entails placing customized, high-energy speaker towers in a circle around Orion. Those huge speakers will blast different energy at the vehicle using a specific pre-programmed algorithm.

As per a release from Lockheed Martin, “If the method proves to be an accurate representation of (NASA's Space Launch System rocket) launch and ascent acoustic loads, it will be used to evaluate and verify Orion's ability to withstand those loads during its next mission, Exploration Mission-1”.

In Littleton, the Orion crew module will also undergo a final decontamination and further post-flight analysis that should conclude next year.

Lockheed Martin is Orion's prime contractor, and nearly about 1,000 employees throughout several of Space Systems' locations have fingerprints on some aspect of the project, with just less than 800 of them in Littleton.

Orion blasted off aboard a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket Dec. 6 on its Experimental Flight Test-1, an uncrewed 4-hour, 24-minute journey more than 3,600 miles into space.

Orion will also be the first spacecraft that will take the first humans to Mars. Orion's next flight, the uncrewed Experimental Mission-1, will be in 2018 on NASA's new SLS rocket, which will surpass the Delta IV Heavy as the most powerful launch vehicle in existence.