Citing \u201ccrew safety\u201d as the agency\u2019s chief priority, NASA officials outlined a new schedule for the Artemis lunar program on Tuesday. The roughly one-year delay for each of the next three missions came as little surprise, given the significant amount of work left to be done before astronauts can return to the Moon later this decade.<\/p>\n
\u201cSafety is our top priority,\u201d NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said during a teleconference with reporters.<\/p>\n
The new dates, according to NASA Associate Administrator Jim Free, are:<\/p>\n
\u201cWe must be realistic,\u201d Free said. \u201cWe\u2019re looking at our Starship progress, and need for propellant transfer, the need for numerous landings. We\u2019re looking at our spacesuits that we\u2019re acquiring in a different manner than we\u2019ve done before, and developing the new spacesuits as well. It\u2019s an incredibly large challenge and a really big deal.\u201d<\/p>\n
After a successful flight of the Artemis I mission at the end of 2022\u2014this was the debut flight of the Space Launch System rocket and an uncrewed Orion spacecraft\u2014NASA set a goal of flying its first crewed flight inside Orion by November 2024. But that is no longer tenable while the space agency works on several issues related to the Orion vehicle, Free and other officials said.<\/p>\n
Amit Kshatriya, a NASA engineer who oversees the \u201cMoon to Mars\u201d program, identified three major areas being worked ahead of Artemis II.<\/p>\n
,<\/p>\n
One of the issues has previously been discussed by the space agency. During Orion\u2019s return through the atmosphere in Artemis I, some pieces of the charred heat shield were unexpectedly \u201cliberated.\u201d The heat shield has plenty of margin, but NASA has studied this extensively because it doesn\u2019t want a piece of the heat shield slamming into the spacecraft and damaging it. Kshatriya said NASA spent 2023 assessing the problem from many angles and expects to identify a root cause this spring.<\/p>\n
A second area involves the abort system used by Orion to pull away from the Space Launch System rocket in case of an emergency during launch. There is some concern that while Orion has been qualified to survive this environment, some of its batteries might be damaged. Kshatriya said the agency has multiple options to address the issue.<\/p>\n
Finally, when it took delivery of components for the Orion to be used in Artemis III, NASA found that there were failures in some of the motor valve circuitry that drives the action of valves within the spacecraft. This led to the discovery of a design flaw in the circuit. Among the components affected in Orion is the carbon dioxide \u201cscrubber.\u201d This necessitated opening up Orion and going in and replacing these components from the Orion to be used for Artemis II. This work is currently the pacing issue for the September 2025 launch date, he said.<\/p>\n
In terms of complexity, the lunar landing represents a significant step up in complexity. While the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft will be thoroughly tested in Artemis II, the landing mission will add the Starship lunar lander, new spacesuits, and the rendezvous and docking of Orion and Starship in lunar orbit. All of this, Kshatriya said, represents a \u201csignificant coordination challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n
,<\/p>\n
Chief among the agency\u2019s concerns is the development of Starship. SpaceX must not only demonstrate the capability to fly the vehicle safely, the company must master the ability to transfer and store cryogenic fuel in orbit, so that a Starship can launch into orbit, be refueled, and then fly out to lunar orbit to rendezvous with Orion.<\/p>\n
Before the Artemis III mission, SpaceX will likely fly dozens of Starship test flights; the campaign to fuel a Starship in orbit alone will take about 10 tanker flights, said Jessica Jensen, a senior engineer at the company. SpaceX must also demonstrate an uncrewed test landing on the Moon and an unprecedented launch of Starship from the lunar surface using cryogenic fuels\u2014liquid oxygen and methane.<\/p>\n
Given the need for a smooth Artemis II flight in September 2025, all of the work on Starship, and the uncertain development of commercial spacesuits, is September 2026 a viable time frame for the mission? Or, as Ars asked during the teleconference, is it an aspirational date?<\/p>\n
In response, Free said he firmly believed the schedule was \u201crealistic\u201d and emphasized that NASA\u2019s contractors agreed to meet those dates.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have 11 people in industry on here that have signed contracts to meet those dates,\u201d Free said of the teleconference call. \u201cSo from my perspective, the people in industry are here today saying we support it. We\u2019ve signed contracts to those dates on the government side, based on the technical details that they\u2019ve given us, that our technical teams have come forward with.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then, Free added an important caveat: \u201cIt is, of course, not without risk.\u201d Not without a fair amount of risk, most likely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Citing \u201ccrew safety\u201d as the agency\u2019s chief priority, NASA officials outlined a new schedule for the Artemis lunar program on Tuesday. The roughly one-year delay for each of the next three missions came as little surprise, given the significant amount of work left to be done before astronauts can return to the Moon later this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45567,"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":[304,190,21],"class_list":["post-45564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-artemis","tag-nasa","tag-space"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45564"}],"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=45564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45564\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}