BULLETIN
Artemis I takes aim at the Moon
Efforts to get the test mission off the ground hit last-minute snags
At long last, NASA is ready to begin its first foray towards the Moon in 50 years with the launch of Artemis I. The mission is an uncrewed test of the Space Launch System (SLS) heavy launch vehicle and the Orion crew module that will carry future crews to the Moon. But will it make its flight? The initial launch on 29 August was scrubbed after a problem was found on SLS’s Engine 3.
“We don’t launch until it’s right,” said NASA administrator Bill Nelson. “I think that this is illustrative that this is a complicated machine. You don’t want to light the candle until it’s ready to go.”
The next launch attempt was on 3 September at 18:17 GMT, after our magazine went to print, with a second on 5 September. If the launch has proceeded, then Orion should now be in lunar orbit. At closest approach, it will come within around 100km of the Moon’s surface, before travelling out to 64,000km from the far side, beating the previous distance record set by Apollo 13 by 48,000km. On board, two female-bodied model torsos will test the effects of deep-space radiation on women for the first time. They’ll be joined by a UK ‘astronaut’ – a Shaun the Sheep puppet.
Orion will return to Earth, reentering the atmosphere at around 40,000km/h, using aerobraking and a series of parachutes to slow to 32km/h when it splashes down. The mission will last 35 to 42 days – far longer than any other past human lunar missions or any of the planned future crewed Artemis flights.
“We are testing and stressing the spacecraft in a way that you would never do with a human crew on board. That is the purpose of a test flight,” says Nelson. www.nasa.gov
Comment by Chris Lintott
Seeing the giant SLS rocket stacked and ready for launch is thrilling, like nothing we’ve seen since the last Saturn V missions in the 1970s. For the first time in years there’s an exciting, ambitious goal that NASA looks set to meet.
Yet each SLS launch will cost a cool $2.2 billion, putting a limit on how much they can use their new rocket. So famous is Saturn V that it’s hard to remember it only flew 13 times. If SLS gets anywhere near that total, I will be very surprised.
If plans for a presence on the Moon do happen, they’ll rely on more economical, reusable, rockets like SpaceX’s Starship than on SLS, which will – if we’re lucky – be a stepping stone on the way to exploring the Solar System.
Chris Lintott co-presents The Sky at Night