CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — It’s makeorbreak time for NASA’s new moon rocket.
With 8.8 million pounds of thrust, the rocket, called the Space Launch System (SLS), is designed to be more powerful than NASA’s mighty Saturn V. Its Orion space capsule exceeds its Apollo ancestor by a third. However, neither spacecraft has passed the ultimate test: a trip to the Moon and back.
That will change on Monday (Aug. 29), when NASA aims to launch the SLS and Orion megarocket on Artemis 1, a test flight that serves as the vanguard of the agency’s Artemis program to return astronauts to the Moon by 2025. Liftoff is scheduled for 8:33 am EDT (1233 GMT) from Pad 39B here at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. You can watch the launch live online Monday starting at 6:30 a.m. EDT (1030 GMT).
“Our zerohour approaches for the Artemis generation,” Mike Sarafin, NASA’s Artemis 1 mission manager, told reporters here Saturday. “We have a greater sense of anticipation.”
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This anticipation is not something that only NASA possesses. up 200,000 spectators are expected (opens in a new tab) to flood Florida’s Space Coast here to see the first NASA moon rocket to fly in more than 50 years. Their hopes mirror those of NASA for a successful mission where success is far from certain.
“This is a very risky mission,” said Jim Free, NASA’s associate director for exploration systems development. “We have a lot of things that could go wrong during the mission in places where we can get home early, or we might have to abort to get home.”
In fact, the mission may not start at all.
“Our potential outcomes on Monday are that we can go inside the window, or we could scrub for different reasons,” Sarafin said. “We’re not going to promise we’ll get off on Monday.”
NASA has a twohour window to try to launch Artemis 1 on Monday that closes at 10:33 a.m. EDT (1433 GMT). NASA has said there is a 70% chance of good weather during this time.
Video: Lightning strikes the Artemis launch pad 1 day before liftoff
A long way to the launch pad
NASA has been trying to build a new giant rocket for almost two decades. In 2004, the agency announced plans for a massive rocket, then called Ares V, as part of its Constellation program to return to the Moon in 2020. That program was eventually canceled, replaced by what has converted to the Artemis program, although Orion. the spacecraft survived the transition. The fivesegment solid rocket boosters (slightly larger than those used in NASA’s shuttle program), which were originally part of Constellation’s Ares 1 rocket to launch Orion, also found new life in the SLS.
“We’ve overcome our challenges, just like every other part of this entire rocket,” Bruce Tiller, NASA’s manager for the SLS thrusters, told Space.com in an interview. “Everybody has had their challenges that they’ve overcome over the years. And now I think we’re as prepared as we can be. And it’s really exciting.”
Congress directed NASA to build the Space Launch System more than a decade ago, calling on the agency to use legacy shuttle hardware such as solid rocket boosters and derived RS25 core engines to build a new vehicle for deep space exploration. At the time, the first test flight was scheduled for 2017. It is very late.
“I would just say that space is difficult,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, who was in the Senate as a Florida senator when SLS was approved, said Saturday about what the agency has learned over time . “You’re developing new systems and it takes money and it takes time.”
Simple, but aggressive goals
NASA has “very simple, but aggressive” goals for Artemis 1, Free said.
First, the mission must test Orion’s heat shield to ensure it can survive reentry temperatures of 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,800 degrees Celsius) when it returns from the Moon at 25,000 mph (40,000 km/h ). NASA also wants to make sure SLS gets Orion into its lunar orbit to see how the spacecraft, which has a service module built by Airbus and provided by the European Space Agency, performs in deep space.
The space agency also wants to retrieve the capsule after it broke up in the Pacific Ocean to see how it fared overall. It carries more than 1,000 sensors to record all facets of the flight, NASA said.
At its furthest point from Earth, Orion will be 290,000 miles from our planet and 40,000 miles beyond the Moon, the farthest a crewed capsule has ever visited (breaking a record set by the crew of the Apollo 13 in 1970). Its 42day mission is much longer than the 10 days a manned flight would take, NASA said.
Despite its length, the mission is expected to complete only one and a half orbits of the moon as it flies in a long, looping orbit in the opposite direction to the moon’s path around Earth. This “distant retrograde orbit” will bring Orion as close as 60 miles (97 km) and as far as 40,000 miles, mission officials said.
Inside Orion is a “Moonikin” mannequin dressed in a spacesuit and humanoid torsos covered with sensors to measure the radiation environment the Artemis astronauts will have to endure. And perhaps the most important test: reentry, when Orion will crash into Earth’s atmosphere, jump around a bit, and then come back down for what NASA calls “jump reentry.”
“We’re pushing the vehicle to its limits, really stressing it to get ready for the crew,” Sarafin said.
There are also some scientific objectives. The Artemis 1 mission includes 10 small cubesats to test technologies for deep space exploration. One, called NEA Scout, will use a solar sail to leave the Moon in search of a small asteroid while the others are expected to support Artemis projects near the Moon.
“Some of them are testing technology to navigate deep space. We even have one that travels farther, it’s going to encounter an asteroid,” said Jacob Bleacher, the directorate’s chief exploration scientist. of NASA’s Exploration Systems Development Mission. “But some of them will focus more on the moon making measurements of the motion, actually mapping where some of the water reservoirs might be.”
Astronauts return to the Moon
If all goes well with Artemis 1, NASA will follow it up with Artemis 2, a manned flight that will send four astronauts on a flyby mission around the Moon in 2024. The delay between missions is partly to wait and see how Orion performs. and also so that NASA can use some of the avionics and other components of Artemis 1 in manned flight.
And if this Artemis 2 mission is successful, NASA hopes to follow it up with its first manned lunar landing of the 21st century on Artemis 3 in 2025. That lunar landing, which would send two astronauts, including the first woman to the Moon, to the Moon. lunar south pole, depends on factors beyond SLS and Orion.
NASA needs new spacesuits and a huge lander to complete the Artemis 3 mission. SpaceX is building a massive Starship lunar lander for NASA while other companies are developing Artemis spacesuits. If any of the components are late, it will affect the agency’s plans.
“If our suits aren’t ready, we won’t land on the moon and the reverse is the same, if our suits are ready and Starship isn’t,” Free said.
But NASA stresses that it is committed to returning to the Moon in a sustainable way that is not just footprints, flags and photos. The agency has already built hardware for Artemis 2 and future SLS boosters, with plans at least through Artemis 9.
NASA has awarded contracts to build components of a new Gateway space station around the Moon to serve as a launch pad for lunar landings. And the everpresent target is Mars, which Nelson said NASA is aiming for a crewed landing in the late 2030s.
“There’s a big, big universe to explore,” Nelson said. “This is the next step in this exploration and this time we are going with our international partners.”
Email Tariq Malik at [email protected] or follow him @tariqjmalik. follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook i Instagram.