{"id":45122,"date":"2024-06-11T21:40:14","date_gmt":"2024-06-11T13:40:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/as-nasa-watches-starship-closely-heres-what-the-agency-wants-to-see-next\/"},"modified":"2024-06-11T21:40:14","modified_gmt":"2024-06-11T13:40:14","slug":"as-nasa-watches-starship-closely-heres-what-the-agency-wants-to-see-next","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/as-nasa-watches-starship-closely-heres-what-the-agency-wants-to-see-next\/","title":{"rendered":"As NASA watches Starship closely, here\u2019s what the agency wants to see next"},"content":{"rendered":"

Few people were happier with the successful outcome of last week\u2019s test flight of SpaceX\u2019s Starship launch system than a NASA engineer named Catherine Koerner.<\/p>\n

In remarks after the spaceflight, Koerner praised the \u201cincredible\u201d video of the Starship rocket and its Super Heavy booster returning to Earth, with each making a soft landing. \u201cThat was very promising, and a very, very successful engineering test,\u201d she added, speaking at a meeting of the Space Studies Board.<\/p>\n

A former flight director, Koerner now manages development of the \u201cexploration systems\u201d that will support the Artemis missions for NASA\u2014a hugely influential position within the space agency. This includes the Space Launch System rocket, NASA\u2019s Orion spacecraft, spacesuits, and the Starship vehicle that will land on the Moon.<\/p>\n

In recent months, NASA officials like Koerner have been grappling with the reality that not all of this hardware is likely to be ready for the planned September 2026 launch date for the Artemis III mission. In particular, the agency is concerned about Starship\u2019s readiness as a \u201cHuman Landing System.\u201d While SpaceX is pressing forward rapidly with a test campaign, there is still a lot of work to be done to get the vehicle down to the lunar surface and safely back into lunar orbit.<\/p>\n

A spare tire<\/h2>\n

For these reasons, as Ars previously reported, NASA and SpaceX are planning for the possibility of modifying the Artemis III mission. Instead of landing on the Moon, a crew would launch in the Orion spacecraft and rendezvous with Starship in low-Earth orbit. This would essentially be a repeat of the Apollo 9 mission, buying down risk and providing a meaningful stepping stone between Artemis missions.<\/p>\n

Officially, NASA maintains that the agency will fly a crewed lunar landing, the Artemis III mission, in September 2026. But almost no one in the space community regards that launch date as more than aspirational. Some of my best sources have put the most likely range of dates for such a mission from 2028 to 2032. A modified Artemis III mission, in low-Earth orbit, would therefore bridge a gap between Artemis II and an eventual landing.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

Koerner has declined interview requests from Ars to discuss this, but during the Space Studies Board, she acknowledged seeing these reports on modifying Artemis III. She was then asked directly whether there was any validity to them. Here is her response in full:<\/p>\n

\n

So here\u2019s what I\u2019ll tell you, if you\u2019ll permit me an analogy. I have in my car a spare tire, right? I don\u2019t have a spare steering wheel. I don\u2019t have spare windshield wipers. I have a spare tire. And why? Why do we carry a spare tire? That someone, at some point, did an assessment and said in order for this vehicle to accomplish its mission, there is a certain likelihood that some things may fail and a certain likelihood that other things may not fail, and it\u2019s probably prudent to have a spare tire. I don\u2019t necessarily need to have a spare steering wheel, right?<\/p>\n

We at NASA do a lot of those kinds of assessments. Like, what happens if this isn\u2019t available? What happens if that isn\u2019t available? Do we have backup plans for that? We\u2019re always doing those kinds of backup plans. Do we have backup plans? It\u2019s imperative for me to look at what happens if an Orion spacecraft is not ready to do a mission. What happens if I don\u2019t have an SLS ready to do a mission? What happens if I don\u2019t have a Human Landing System available to execute a mission? What happens if I don\u2019t have Gateway that I was planning on to do a mission?<\/p>\n

So we look at backup plans all the time. There are lots of different opportunities for that. We have not made any changes to the current plan as I outlined it here today and talked about that. But we have lots of people who are looking at lots of different backup plans so that we are doing due diligence and making sure that we have the spare tire if we need the spare tire. It\u2019s the reason we have, for example, two systems now that we\u2019re developing for the Human Landing System, the one for SpaceX and the other one from Blue Origin. It\u2019s the reason we have two providers that are building spacesuit hardware. Collins as well as Axiom, right? So we always are doing that kind of thing.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That is a long way of saying that if SpaceX\u2019s Starship is not ready in 2026, NASA is actively considering alternative plans. (The most likely of these would be an Orion-Starship docking in low-Earth orbit.) NASA has not made any final plans and is waiting to see how Artemis II progresses and what happens with Starship and spacesuit development.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

What SpaceX needs to demonstrate<\/h2>\n

During her remarks, Koerner was also asked what SpaceX\u2019s next major milestone is and when it would need to be completed for NASA to remain on track for a lunar landing in 2026. \u201cTheir next big milestone test, from a contract perspective, is the cryogenic transfer test,\u201d she said. \u201cThat is going to be early next year.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Some details about the Starship propellant transfer test.<\/p>\n

Credit:
\n NASA<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

This timeline is consistent with what NASA\u2019s Human Landing System program manager, Lisa Watson-Morgan recently told Ars. It provides a useful benchmark to evaluate Starship\u2019s progress in NASA\u2019s eyes. The \u201cprop transfer demo\u201d is a fairly complex mission that involves the launch of a \u201cStarship target\u201d from the Starbase facility in South Texas. Then a second vehicle, the \u201cStarship chaser,\u201d will launch and meet the target in orbit and rendezvous. The chaser will then transfer a quantity of propellant to the target spaceship.<\/p>\n

The test will entail a lot of technology, including docking mechanisms, navigation sensors, quick disconnects, and more. If SpaceX completes this test during the first quarter of 2025, NASA will at least theoretically have a path forward to a crewed lunar landing in 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Few people were happier with the successful outcome of last week\u2019s test flight of SpaceX\u2019s Starship launch system than a NASA engineer named Catherine Koerner. In remarks after the spaceflight, Koerner praised the \u201cincredible\u201d video of the Starship rocket and its Super Heavy booster returning to Earth, with each making a soft landing. \u201cThat was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45057,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45122"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45122\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}