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Author of the article:
Reuters
Joey Roulette and Steve Gorman
Publication date:
November 15, 2022 • 21 minutes ago • Read 4 minutes Join the conversation
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CAPE CANAVERAL – Ground crews at Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday filled the main fuel tanks of NASA’s next-generation high-altitude lunar rocket for its debut launch, a flight to kick off the space agency’s Artemis program American 50 years after the last Apollo lunar mission.
The 32-story Space Launch System (SLS) rocket was scheduled to lift off from Cape Canaveral in Florida at 1:04 a.m. EST (0604 GMT) on Wednesday to send its Orion capsule on a 25-day test flight to around the moon and back. without astronauts on board.
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On Monday, NASA managers gave the go ahead with preparations for the flight after 10 weeks beset by multiple engineering difficulties, back-to-back hurricanes and two excursions that took the spacecraft from its hangar to the launch pad .
Late in Tuesday night’s countdown, a new potential problem emerged when NASA officials reported what appeared to be a hydrogen leak in the rocket’s upper stage fuel lines, which lead launch managers to assemble a special “red team” of technicians to visit the platform. the goal of tightening a key connection.
Not long before, NASA chief Bill Nelson had struck a note of optimism amid fuel-loading operations and other pre-flight activities that were reportedly going well.
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“I feel good,” he told Reuters. “But you’re not going until it’s ready, and this is a test flight.”
Launch attempts on August 29 and September 3 were aborted due to fuel line leaks and other technical issues that NASA has since resolved. While tethered to its launch pad last week, the rocket endured strong winds and rain from Hurricane Nicole, forcing the flight to be postponed by two days.
Weather is always a factor beyond NASA’s control. The latest forecast called for an 80 percent chance of favorable conditions during Wednesday’s two-hour launch window, NASA said.
On Tuesday afternoon, launch teams began the long and delicate process of loading the rocket’s middle stage fuel tanks with hundreds of thousands of gallons of supercooled liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen propellant.
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About five hours before liftoff, those tanks were filled, achieving a “significant milestone” in launch preparations, a NASA spokesman said. Crews continued to refill the tanks periodically to replenish small amounts of propellant as the liquid gases gradually faded away as vapor.
Called Artemis I, the mission marks the first flight of the SLS rocket and Orion capsule together, built by Boeing Co and Lockheed Martin Corp, respectively, under contract to NASA.
It also marks a major shift in the direction of NASA’s post-Apollo human spaceflight program after decades focused on low-Earth orbit with space shuttles and the International Space Station. (See graphic)
SUCCESSOR OF APOLLO
Named after the ancient Greek goddess of the hunt, and Apollo’s twin sister, Artemis aims to return astronauts to the surface of the Moon as early as 2025.
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Twelve astronauts walked on the moon during six Apollo missions between 1969 and 1972, the only space flights that have yet placed humans on the lunar surface. But Apollo, born of the Cold War-era Soviet and American space race, was less driven by science than Artemis.
The new moon program has enlisted commercial partners such as Elon Musk’s SpaceX and the space agencies of Europe, Canada and Japan to eventually establish a long-term lunar base as a springboard for even more ambitious human journeys to Mars.
Getting the SLS-Orion spacecraft off the ground is a key first step. Its maiden voyage aims to put the vehicle to the test in a rigorous test flight, pushing its design limits to demonstrate that the spacecraft is suitable for flying astronauts.
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If the mission is successful, a crewed Artemis II flight around the Moon and back could come in 2024, followed a few years later by the program’s first lunar landing by astronauts, one of them a woman. with Artemis III.
Considered the world’s most powerful and complex rocket, the SLS represents the largest new vertical launch system NASA has built since the Apollo-era Saturn V.
Barring last-minute glitches, the launch countdown should end with the rocket’s four R-25 main engines and its twin solid rocket boosters firing, sending the spacecraft skyward.
About 90 minutes after liftoff, the rocket’s upper stage will propel Orion out of ongoing Earth orbit for a 25-day flight that will bring it within 60 miles (97 km) of the lunar surface before sailing 40,000 miles (64,374 km) beyond the moon and back to Earth. The capsule is expected to burst on December 11.
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Although there will be no people on board, Orion will carry a simulated crew of three, one male and two female dummies, equipped with sensors to measure radiation levels and other stresses the astronauts would experience.
A primary goal is to test the durability of Orion’s heat shield during reentry when it hits Earth’s atmosphere at 24,500 miles (39,429 km) per hour, or 32 times the speed of sound, on its return from lunar orbit, much faster than the re-entry from the space station.
The heat shield is designed to withstand reentry friction that is expected to raise temperatures outside the capsule to nearly 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,760 degrees Celsius).
More than a decade in development with years of delays and budget overruns, the SLS-Orion spacecraft has cost NASA at least $37 billion to date, including design, construction, testing and ground facilities . NASA’s Office of the Inspector General has projected total costs for Artemis at $93 billion by 2025.
NASA calls the program a boon for space exploration that has generated tens of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in commerce.
(Reporting by Joey Roulette in Cape Canaveral, Fla. and Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Will Dunham and Gerry Doyle)
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