by NASA’s first manned Artemis mission, a flight to send four astronauts on a trip around the Moon and back will be delayed by almost a year, from late 2024 to at least September 2025, NASA announced Tuesday. Likewise, the first astronaut landing on the moon is being delayed from late 2025 to September 2026.
“As we remind everyone at all times, safety is our top priority,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told reporters during an afternoon conference call. “To give the Artemis teams more time to overcome challenges with first-time developments and integration, we will give them more time on Artemis 2 and 3.
“We are adjusting our schedule to target Artemis 2 for September 2025 and September 2026 for Artemis 3, which will send humans for the first time to the lunar south pole. “Artemis 4 remains on track for September 2028, and while there are clearly challenges ahead, our teams are making incredible progress.”
Rumors circulated for months of delays and the Government Accountability Office reported late last year that delays were practically a certainty. But the dates announced Tuesday delayed flights more than many expected.
Plan to send astronauts to the moon
NASA launched the Artemis program first test flight, Artemis 1in November 2022, using the agency’s powerful Space Launch System heavy-lift rocket to send an unmanned Orion crew capsule on a flight around the moon and back.
NASA had planned to launch the Artemis 2 mission later this year to carry a crew of three men and one woman on Orion’s first piloted flight, a test mission to test the craft’s life support, propulsion and other systems. spacecraft in Earth orbit before moving on to take a deep space tour around the moon and vice versa.
But mission officials opted to delay the launch to give engineers more time to resolve a problem with the Orion capsule’s protective heat shield that was found after the explosion. Artemis 1 re-entry. They also need to fix more recently discovered issues with critical batteries that were found while testing units intended for the Artemis 3 Orion.
The heat shield is designed to ablate or carbonize during reentry heating upon returning from the Moon at speeds of more than 25,000 mph. During Artemis 1’s reentry, more charred material separated from the heat shield than computer models predicted.
While the unexpected “release” had no impact on the spacecraft (NASA said the astronauts wouldn’t even have noticed if they had been on board), engineers want to make sure they understand the underlying cause so that updated computer models can accurately predict the effects of readmission. along multiple trajectories.
Amit Kshatriya, deputy administrator of NASA’s Moon to Mars Program, said engineers are getting closer to the root cause of the unexpected behavior. The delay in launch was mainly due to the battery issue and the disassembly required to access and replace them amidst a large number of complex subsystems.
“The Artemis 2 crew will be the first people to put human eyes on the far side of the moon (since Apollo), and I can’t imagine all the images and recordings they will bring back to capture those moments, but also to inform our understanding of the Moon,” said NASA Associate Administrator Jim Free.
“The crew is a constant reminder to us of how important it is to remain focused on the work we must do to ensure their safe return.”
SpaceX builds Starship lunar lander
As for the Artemis 3 lunar lander flight, the late 2026 goal assumes SpaceX’s Starship lunar lander, a vehicle that has not yet been operated in space, successfully completes multiple test flights in Earth orbit. , along with at least one pilotless lunar landing demonstration in 2025.
The Human Landing System, or HLS, is a variant of the Starship upper stage that SpaceX is building that will launch atop the company’s massive Super Heavy booster.
The HLS, which is being built under a $2.9 billion NASA contract awarded in 2021, will consume all the cryogenic methane and liquid oxygen propellant that just arrived in low-Earth orbit. To reach the moon, the rocket must be refueled robotically.
Jessica Jensen, vice president of operations and customer integration at SpaceX, said that on order of 10 Super Heavy-Starship “tanker” flights will be needed to transport the propellants needed to refuel the HLS.
“It will be about 10,” he said. “That would be my rough guess right now. But it could be lower depending on how well the first flight tests go or it could be a little higher.”
The ultracold propellants, which continually evaporate, must first be transferred, one flight at a time, to some type of storage vehicle. When enough propellant is available, the HLS will be launched, refueled from the depot, and then take off toward the moon, where it will await the arrival of an Orion crew.
The first two SpaceX Super Heavy-Starship test flights last year They were only partially successful. and none of the upper stage ships reached the planned suborbital trajectory. Jensen said a third test flight is planned for February, pending FAA approval, followed by the start of propellant transfer test flights later this year.
“Crew safety is paramount”
According to the revised Artemis 3 schedule, an unpiloted HLS test flight to the surface of the moon and back is planned sometime in 2025.
“Crew safety is paramount,” Jensen said. “So we want to make sure we do as much flight testing as possible just on the Starship vehicle overall, but also do the uncrewed moon landing with Starship before Artemis 3.”
Under the Artemis program, NASA plans to establish a sustained presence on the Moon, regularly sending astronauts to the south polar region, where scientists say there may be ice deposits in permanently shadowed craters.
If such deposits are confirmed, solar or nuclear energy could be used to break the ice into hydrogen and oxygen, providing air, water and rocket fuel for future deep space explorers. Ice deposits could greatly reduce the cost of such missions compared to launching resources from Earth.
China has similar plans to explore the Moon’s south pole, saying its first crewed landing mission is planned for 2030. Asked if he was worried China could win the latest space race, Nelson said: “I’m not really worried. that China is going to land before us.”
“I think China has a very aggressive plan,” he said. “I think they would like to land before us because that might give them some PR. But the fact is, I don’t think they will.”
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