The four astronauts of the Artemis II mission punched their moon ticket on Thursday afternoon \u2014 but back at Kennedy Space Center teams are already refocusing on the launch of Artemis III next year.<\/p>\n
NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen were given the OK for the translunar injection burn that will send them on a lunar fly-by, bringing humans into deep space for the first time since the Apollo 17 moon landing mission of 1972.<\/p>\n
While the quartet have the rest of their 10-day mission to complete, with a targeted splashdown in the Pacific Ocean on April 10, teams at KSC\u2019s Launch Pad 39-B began their first look at how much damage the launch site took after the Space Launch System rocket blasted off this past Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The SLS is the most powerful rocket to ever launch to orbit, producing 8.8 million pounds of thrust on liftoff. Its only-ever previous launch, the Artemis I mission in 2022, handed out severe damage to the mobile launcher (ML1) that required significant repairs.<\/p>\n
Directly after Wednesday\u2019s launch, Lori Glaze, acting associate administrator for NASA\u2019s Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, said imagery of the site seemed promising. Teams headed out to the pad after the hazardous conditions were given the all clear.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe haven\u2019t seen evidence of things like after Artemis I, (when)\u00a0the elevator doors were blown off. We haven\u2019t seen that,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
NASA has yet to update further conditions, but Glaze detailed some of the things that did work on Artemis II that were problematic during the 2022 launch.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the issues we had was that the water that was supposed to be spraying down the launch pad\u2026 that didn\u2019t happen (on Artemis I). We saw a lot of corrosion,\u201d she said, but for this launch, \u201cthe water was working, so things were getting washed down.\u201d<\/p>\n
Teams will still remove parts from ML1 to get separate washdowns and avoid corrosion.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re optimistic, but we\u2019ve got to get out to the pad. We\u2019ve got to look. We did a lot of changes after Artemis I, trying to harden the system so that we can turn it around faster,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
One of the options NASA has now for any issues with ML1 is to pluck items off of the mobile launcher 2 (ML2), the $1 billion plus launch tower that had been under construction adjacent to KSC\u2019s Vehicle Assembly Building for the last couple of years.<\/p>\n
Work on ML2, though, has stopped as the tower\u00a0was rendered extraneous after NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced the agency was stopping work on a larger version of the SLS rocket for which the tower was built.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have issued a stop work order for mobile launcher 2,\u201d said Shawn Quinn, program manager for NASA\u2019s Exploration Ground Systems group based at KSC. \u201cWe\u2019ve pivoted the team to be begin removing some of the hardware that\u2019s common to mobile launcher 1 that we can use as critical spares.\u201d<\/p>\n
Quinn said some of the items used on the towers require parts that take a long time to procure, so having ML2 as a donor tower helps.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re hard to build, and they will be put to good use for future Artemis missions for supporting mobile launcher 1,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
ML1 has to be ready to go before NASA can begin any stacking of the Artemis III rocket in the VAB. First up will be the segments for the two solid rocket boosters, followed by the core stage, upper stage and Orion spacecraft.<\/p>\n
Chris Cianciola, deputy manager for the SLS program, said the booster segments \u201care being loaded on the rail cars, and they\u2019re ready for shipment.\u201d<\/p>\n
They would arrive this month while the Artemis III core stage\u2019s engine section is already in the VAB in High Bay 2 while the top four-fifths of the core stage are at NASA\u2019s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans will head for KSC at the end of the month.<\/p>\n
If NASA elects to use the interim cryogenic propulsion system (ICPS) upper stage on Artemis III, that\u2019s in storage at United Launch Alliance\u2019s facilities in Cape Canaveral already. Meanwhile, the adapters to connect the stages and Orion are \u201cin storage, waiting on the phone call to for assembly. So we\u2019re in really good shape for Artemis III.\u201d<\/p>\n
As far as the next Orion spacecraft goes, it too is already at KSC along with the European Service Module that arrived last December, said Orion Program Manager Howard Hu.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been making good progress,\u201d he said. \u201cOn the crew module side, we\u2019re wrapping up the final big installation. So the heat shield is going getting attached to the crew module this month, as well as a side hatch, and it\u2019s going to go through its paces for testing as an individual element.\u201d<\/p>\n
The crew module and service module will be put together next summer and would be on plan to support launch soon after.<\/p>\n
Isaacman\u2019s new Artemis mission plan calls for the next flight to be to low-Earth orbit, targeting mid 2027. For that mission, Orion will dock with one or both of the lunar landers being developed. After that, the Artemis IV mission would aim for a lunar landing in early 2028 with a second lunar landing potentially flying in late 2028.<\/p>\n
That schedule needs a lot of parts to fall into place correctly, but Isaacman\u2019s plan is pushing for as short as a 10-month turnaround between launches as NASA seeks to use all of the SLS rockets in flow and the pivot to heavy lift rockets from commercial providers like SpaceX and Blue Origin.<\/p>\n
But the SLS can\u2019t do anything until the mobile launcher is good to go,<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do anticipate there will be some items that will need to be replaced,\u201d Glaze\u00a0 said. \u201cIt\u2019s a pretty violent environment, but we\u2019re hopeful that that\u2019s minimized.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The four astronauts of the Artemis II mission punched their moon ticket on Thursday afternoon \u2014 but back…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":218182,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[16924,114,11969,115,139,141,140,554,109,76686,1769],"class_list":{"0":"post-218181","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-orlando","8":"tag-artemis","9":"tag-latest-headlines","10":"tag-nasa","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-orlando","13":"tag-orlando-headlines","14":"tag-orlando-news","15":"tag-science","16":"tag-social","17":"tag-social-business","18":"tag-space"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218181\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/218182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}