Years behind schedule and billions over budget, NASA’s Lunar New Moon rocket debuts on Monday in a high-risk test flight before astronauts head to the top.
The 98-meter rocket will attempt to send an empty crew capsule into distant lunar orbit, 50 years after NASA’s famous Apollo moon shots.
If all goes well, astronauts could set off as early as 2024 to orbit the moon, with NASA aiming to land two people on the lunar surface by the end of 2025.
Liftoff is scheduled for Monday morning from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
The six-week test flight is risky and could be cut short if something goes wrong, NASA officials warn.
“We’re going to stress it and test it. We’re going to make it do things that we would never do with a crew to try to make it as safe as possible,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
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The retired founder of George Washington University’s space policy institute said there is a lot to do in this test. Spiraling costs and long gaps between missions will make a comeback difficult if things go south, he noted.
“It is supposed to be the first step in a sustained program of human exploration of the moon, Mars and beyond,” John Logsdon said. “Will the United States have the will to move forward in the face of major dysfunction?”
The price tag for this one mission: over $4 billion. Add up everything from the program’s inception a decade ago to a moon landing in 2025, and there’s even more sticker shock: $93 billion.
Here’s a summary of the first flight of the Artemis program, named after Apollo’s mythological twin sister.
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rocket power
The new rocket is shorter and thinner than the Saturn V rockets that launched 24 Apollo astronauts to the Moon half a century ago.
But it is more powerful, with 4 million kilos of thrust. It’s called the Space Launch System rocket, SLS for short, but a less clunky name is being discussed, according to Nelson.
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Unlike the streamlined Saturn V, the new rocket has a pair of belt thrusters repurposed from NASA’s space shuttles.
The boosters will be disassembled after two minutes, just like the shuttle boosters, but will not be fished out of the Atlantic for reuse.
The central stage will continue to fire before breaking apart and crashing into the Pacific in pieces. Two hours after liftoff, an upper stage will send the capsule, Orion, hurtling toward the moon.
2:14 NASA Artemis 1 moon launch to set stage for lunar return NASA Artemis 1 moon launch to set stage for lunar return
Moonship
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NASA’s high-tech automated Orion capsule is named after the constellation, one of the brightest in the night sky.
At 3 meters high, it is more spacious than the Apollo capsule, accommodating four astronauts instead of three. For this test flight, a full-size dummy in an orange flight suit will occupy the commander’s seat, equipped with vibration and acceleration sensors.
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Two other mannequins made of material that simulates human tissue (female heads and torsos, but without limbs) will measure cosmic radiation, one of the biggest risks of spaceflight.
A torso is trying on a protective vest from Israel. Unlike the rocket, Orion has been launched before, making two laps around Earth in 2014.
This time, the European Space Agency’s Service Module will be attached for propulsion and solar power across four wings.
Read more: Buzz Aldrin’s moon flight jacket sells at auction for $2.8 million
flight plan
Orion’s flight is supposed to last six weeks from liftoff in Florida to splashdown in the Pacific, twice as long as the astronauts’ trips to record the systems.
It will take almost a week to reach the Moon, 386,000 kilometers away. After closely orbiting the moon, the capsule will enter a distant orbit with a far point of 61,000 kilometers.
This will place Orion 450,000 kilometers from Earth, further than Apollo.
The big test comes at the end of the mission, as Orion hits the atmosphere at 25,000 mph on its way to a splash in the Pacific.
The heat shield uses the same material as the Apollo capsules to withstand re-entry temperatures of 2,750 degrees Celsius. But the advanced design foresees faster and hotter returns for future Mars crews.
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Hitchhikers
In addition to three test dummies, the flight has plenty of stowaways for deep space research. Ten shoebox-sized satellites will emerge as Orion climbs toward the Moon.
The problem is that these so-called CubeSats were installed on the rocket a year ago and the batteries of half of them could not be recharged as the launch was delayed.
NASA expects some to fail, given the low-cost, high-risk nature of these mini-satellites.
Radiation measuring CubeSats should be fine. Also in the clear: a solar sail demonstration aimed at an asteroid. In a nod to the future, Orion will carry a few pieces of lunar rock collected by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin from Apollo 11 in 1969, and a bolt from one of its rocket engines, recovered from the sea a decade ago.
Aldrin will not attend the launch, according to NASA, but three of his former colleagues will be there: Walter Cunningham of Apollo 7, Tom Stafford of Apollo 10 and Harrison Schmitt of Apollo 17, the penultimate man to go walk on the moon
Apollo against Artemis
More than 50 years later, Apollo remains NASA’s greatest achievement.
Using technology from the 1960s, it took NASA just eight years to go from launching its first astronaut, Alan Shepard, to landing Armstrong and Aldrin on the moon.
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By contrast, Artemis has already dragged on for more than a decade, despite being based on the short-lived Constellation moon exploration program.
Twelve Apollo astronauts walked on the moon from 1969 to 1972, staying no more than three days at a time. For Artemis, NASA will draw on a diverse group of astronauts that currently number 42 and extend the time crews will spend on the Moon to at least a week.
The goal is to create a long-term lunar presence that will grease the skids to send people to Mars. NASA’s Nelson promises to announce the first Artemis moon crews once Orion returns to Earth.
What follows
There is much to be done before astronauts set foot on the Moon again.
A second test flight will send four astronauts around the Moon and back, perhaps as early as 2024.
A year later, NASA aims to send four more, with two of them touching down at the lunar south pole. Orion doesn’t come with its own lunar lander like the Apollo spacecraft did, so NASA has hired Elon Musk’s SpaceX to provide its spacecraft for the first Artemis moon landing. Two other private companies are developing suits to walk on the moon.
The sci-fi-looking spacecraft would link up with Orion on the moon and take a pair of astronauts to the surface and return to the capsule to return home. So far, Starship has only flown 10 kilometers.
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Musk wants to launch Starship around Earth on SpaceX’s Super Heavy Booster before attempting an unmanned moon landing. One problem: the starship will need to fill up at a fuel tank in Earth orbit, before heading to the Moon.
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