Years behind schedule and billions over budget, NASA’s New Moon rocket makes its debut Monday in a high-stakes test flight before astronauts climb aboard.
The 98-meter rocket will attempt to send an empty crew capsule into distant lunar orbit, 50 years after NASA’s famous Apollo moon pictures.
If all goes well, astronauts could strap on as soon as 2024 for a trip around the moon, with NASA aiming to land two humans 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 him and test him. We’re going to make it do things that we would never do with a crew on it 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 a lot depends on this trial run. Spiraling costs and long gaps between missions will make for a difficult comeback if things go downhill, he noted.
“This is supposed to be the first step in a long 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 disruption?”
The price tag for this single mission: more than $4 billion. Add up everything from the start of the program a decade ago to the moon landing in 2025, and there’s an even bigger shock: $93 billion.
Here is a brief description of the first flight of the Artemis program, named after the mythological twin sister of Apollo.
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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 kilograms of thrust. It’s called the Space Launch System rocket, SLS for short, but Nelson says a less cumbersome name is being discussed.
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Unlike the streamlined Saturn V, the new rocket has a pair of strap-on boosters repurposed from NASA’s space shuttles.
The boosters will peel off after two minutes, just like the shuttle boosters did, but will not be fished out of the Atlantic Ocean for reuse.
The main stage will continue to fire before separating and crashing into the Pacific Ocean in pieces. Two hours after liftoff, the upper stage will send the Orion capsule racing toward the Moon.
2:14 NASA’s Artemis 1 moon launch will usher in a lunar return NASA’s Artemis 1 moon launch will usher in a lunar return
Moon ship
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NASA’s high-tech Orion automated 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 manikin 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 simulating human tissue – heads and female torsos but without limbs – will measure cosmic radiation, one of the biggest risks of spaceflight.
A torso tests a protective vest from Israel. Unlike the rocket, Orion has been launched before, making two orbits of Earth in 2014.
This time, the European Space Agency’s Service Module will be attached for propulsion and solar power via four wings.
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Flight plan
Orion’s flight is expected to last six weeks from liftoff in Florida to splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, twice as many astronaut trips to tax the systems.
It will take nearly a week to reach the moon, 386,000 kilometers away. After orbiting the Moon, the capsule will enter a distant orbit with a far point of 61,000 kilometers.
This would put Orion 450,000 kilometers from Earth, further than Apollo.
The big test comes at the end of the mission, when Orion collides with the atmosphere at 25,000 mph on its way to falling into the Pacific Ocean.
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 predicts faster and hotter returns by future Mars crews.
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hitchhikers
In addition to three test dummies, the flight accommodates a host of idle passengers for deep space exploration. Ten shoebox-sized satellites will pop up as Orion hurtles toward the moon.
The problem is that these so-called CubeSats were installed in the rocket a year ago, and the batteries of half of them could not be recharged because the launch kept getting delayed.
NASA expects some to fail, given the low-cost and high-risk nature of these minisatellites.
Radiation measuring CubeSats should be fine. Also clear: demonstration of a solar sail aimed at an asteroid. In a nod to Back to the Future, Orion will carry several pieces of moon rock collected by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin from Apollo 11 in 1969, as well as a bolt from one of their rocket engines salvaged from the sea a decade ago.
According to NASA, Aldrin did not attend the launch, but three of his former colleagues will be there: Walter Cunningham of Apollo 7, Tom Stafford of Apollo 10 and Harrison Schmidt of Apollo 17, the penultimate man to walk on the moon.
Apollo vs. Artemis
More than 50 years later, Apollo is still NASA’s greatest achievement.
Using technology from the 1960s, NASA took just eight years from launching its first astronaut, Alan Shepard, to landing Armstrong and Aldrin on the moon.
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Artemis, by contrast, has already dragged on for more than a decade, despite being based on the short-lived Constellation lunar 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 from a diverse pool of astronauts, currently numbering 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 crush the skids to send humans to Mars. NASA’s Nelson promises to announce the first Artemis lunar crews after Orion returns to Earth.
What next
Much remains to be done before astronauts can set foot on the moon again.
A second test flight will send four astronauts around the moon and back, possibly as early as 2024.
A year or so later, NASA aims to send four more aloft, with two of them touching down at the moon’s south pole. Orion doesn’t come with its own lunar lander like the Apollo spacecraft did, so NASA hired Elon Musk’s SpaceX to provide its Starship spacecraft for the first Artemis landing on the moon. Two other private companies are developing moonwalk suits.
The sci-fi-looking Starship will dock with Orion on the moon and take two astronauts to the surface and back into the capsule to head home. So far, Starship has only flown 10 kilometers.
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Musk wants to launch Starship around Earth with SpaceX’s Super Heavy Booster before attempting an unmanned moon landing. One catch: The Starship will need to refuel at a fuel depot in Earth orbit before heading to the Moon.
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