NASA is set to launch its most powerful rocket ever on Monday for a crucial, long-overdue test mission, sending an unpiloted Orion crew capsule on a 42-day journey around the moon, five decades after the famed Saturn 5 moon rocket made its last flight.
The first Space Launch System (SLS) rocket is finally prepared for launch from pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center at 8:33 a.m. EDT Monday, the start of a two-hour window despite being years behind schedule and vastly over budget. There is a 70% likelihood of pleasant weather, according to forecasters.
There are alternatives to launch. Based on the intended trajectory and the ever-changing locations of the Earth and moon, September 2 and 5 are the best dates. The flight would probably thereafter take off in October.
The Space Launch System heavy-lift moon rocket is shown being towed to launch pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in two different angles. Blastoff is scheduled at 8:33 a.m. EDT on Monday for a 42-day unpiloted test mission. On October 10, the Orion crew capsule at the top of the rocket will splash down in the Pacific Ocean if all goes according to plan. NASA
The SLS rocket stands 322 feet tall and will weigh 5.75 million pounds after 750,000 gallons of supercold liquid oxygen and hydrogen rocket fuel are pumped aboard early on Monday. It was cobbled together from leftover space shuttle components, a new core stage, and a modified upper stage borrowed from another rocket. (The NASA SLS Reference Guide has further information.)
When the SLS lifts off, four hydrogen-fueled engines from the shuttle era and twin solid rocket boosters with 25% more propellant than their shuttle predecessors will produce a ground-shaking 8.8 million pounds of thrust, providing a breathtaking display for thousands of spaceport employees, locals, and visitors.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told CBS News, “I’m worried people believe it’s ordinary.” From after the candles go out, things are anything but ordinary. It is a high-wire act from beginning to end. This is significant. And it is lovely. It’s a monster, too! Simply said, the immensity overwhelms you.
The main objective of the Artemis 1 mission is to place Orion in lunar orbit and, as a result, prepare for its October 10 25,000 mph return to Earth’s atmosphere. Making ensuring the capsule’s 16.5-foot-wide heat shield can shelter returning astronauts from the 5,000-degree inferno of re-entry on a future voyage is the mission’s top goal.
This flight is a test. Former shuttle commander and current NASA associate administrator Bob Cabana stated of the first SLS mission, “It’s not without danger. “We have done the best we can to understand the risk and to reduce it. But since we want to fly Orion to the moon with a crew, we are putting more strain on it than it was intended to.
And we want to make sure that when we do that, everything works flawlessly and that we are aware of all the hazards, he said. We’ll gain a lot of knowledge from this test fly, I’m sure.
NASA (labeled rocket)/CBS News (facts and figures)
Returning Americans to the moon
If the unmanned Artemis 1 test flight goes smoothly, NASA intends to launch four astronauts atop the second SLS rocket for an around-the-moon shakedown flight in 2024 (Artemis 2) before the first woman and the first person of color touch down near the moon’s south pole in 2025 or 2026 (the Apollo 11 mission).
After then, NASA plans to continue launching Artemis lunar missions, sending people to the south polar zone about once a year for study and to look for ice deposits in craters that are continuously shaded, a resource that later crews may use to create air, water, and rocket fuel.
However, the Artemis crew and spacecraft must first go there. And for that, a rocket must be able to lift humans, machines, and other objects out of Earth’s gravitational pull and over the moon’s 240,000-mile distance with enough fuel, supplies, and tools to undertake a useful mission and return the crew to Earth safely afterward.
Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, the first female launch director for NASA, told CBS News that she was “an outstanding rocket.” “She delivers a brand-new heavy lift capacity for deep space exploration to our country’s space program.
It will alter how we do exploration. It will take us back to the moon and set the path for our next moves as we get ready to go to places like Mars and other further-off locations.
NASA’s first female launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson (standing) in her command position in Firing Room 1 at the Kennedy Space Center. NASA
The original 322-foot SLS “block 1” version can launch 27 tons to the moon and carry 95 tons of fuel and cargo into low-Earth orbit. It is the only heavy lifter that is already “human rated” and the only rocket in the world that can launch that much cargo to the moon in a single mission.
Future Block 1B and Block 2 variations will be more than 350 feet tall and able to carry between 38 and 47 tons of cargo to the moon, with the former employing a more powerful four-engine Exploration Upper Stage and the latter using both the EUS and more potent boosters.
a large SpaceX rocket
The SLS is not the only large rocket in construction, however. SpaceX is developing the Super Heavy-Starship, a completely reusable two-stage behemoth that dwarfs the SLS and any other rocket currently under development.
The Super Heavy first stage will have 33 methane-burning Raptor engines that will produce a record 16 million pounds of thrust, and the Starship upper stage, which has six Raptors, crew quarters, and life support systems, is intended to carry people and cargo to the moon and beyond on NASA-sponsored missions or purely commercial endeavors.
According to SpaceX, the 394-foot-tall, 30-foot-wide rocket will be able to send at least 100 tons to the moon, which is twice as much as the SLS Block 2. However, the Super Heavy-Starship is unable to complete it in a single trip. Before leaving Earth orbit, refueling moon-bound spacecraft would need many launches of Starship tankers, and a substantial delay or launch failure might have serious repercussions.
Super Heavy-Starship rocket being tested at SpaceX’s flight test site in Boca Chica, Texas, in the gulf of Mexico. The SpaceX rocket needs refueling in low-Earth orbit but is more powerful than NASA’s disposable Space Launch System moon rocket. It is not yet known when the vehicle may be prepared for operational usage, despite being less costly than the SLS. SpaceXNo nation or corporation has ever performed orbital refueling on such a large scale, and SpaceX has yet to show that it is capable of doing so.
Musk, though, is certain the system will function. Under a $2.9 billion deal, SpaceX is already developing a Starship derivative that will operate as NASA’s first Artemis lunar lander, and it will be necessary for the vessel to be able to refuel in Earth orbit.
“The SLS is intended to transport Orion to the deep space it was designed as. What SLS accomplishes is that “Jim Free, director of exploration systems at NASA, remarked. “Of course, SpaceX is a partner, and we support what it is doing. However, they do not yet possess the same capacity as SLS.”
In comparison to the government-owned, controlled, and managed SLS, the SpaceX Super Heavy-Starship offers one significant cost advantage. Although SpaceX does not disclose development costs, it is anticipated that the Super Heavy-Starship will be much less costly than the SLS.
Launching at $4.1 billion
The Inspector General of NASA estimates that up to FY 2025, the Artemis (moon program) will cost NASA $93 billion.
We also estimate that a single SLS/Orion combination will cost $4.1 billion to produce and operate for launches of Artemis 1 through 4, however the Agency is always working to make its programs more affordable.
The use of sole-source, cost-plus contracts and the fact that all components, with the exception of the Orion capsule, its subsystems, and the supporting launch facilities, are disposable and “single use,” in contrast to emerging commercial space flight systems, are cited as factors in the SLS’s exorbitant price tag.
An illustration of the Orion spacecraft orbiting the moon with its solar-powered service module and propulsion system from the European Space Agency. Space Agency of Europe
All rockets are destroyed after a single use, in sharp contrast to SpaceX’s commitment to totally reusable rockets, with the exception of the Orion crew capsule. That would be equivalent to flying a 747 jumbo jet from New York to Los Angeles and then discarding the aircraft, as SpaceX founder Musk likes to point out.
The NASA inspector general, Paul Martin, told CBS News that “it is a worry.” “Unlike certain launch systems that are available on the commercial side of the house, which have several uses, this device is disposable and only has one usage. It is a one-time usage only system. Therefore, the $4.1 billion per trip… worries us so much that we said in our reports that we believe it to be unsustainable.”
But the SLS has one very noticeable short-term benefit: flight-tested parts. At the conclusion of the space shuttle program, when Congress authorized the SLS project, it stipulated that NASA must employ existing gear wherever feasible.
The SLS Block 1 includes modified shuttle-derived main engines, a Northrop Grumman booster system that is already human rated, and a Boeing-designed upper stage that is utilized with United Launch Alliance’s Delta 4 rocket. The Artemis 1 engines have flown a total of 25 shuttle missions.
Even the service module for the Orion provided by the European Space Agency, made by Airbus, has a history of flight. Aerojet Rocketdyne’s recycled space shuttle Orbital Maneuvering System engine, which made 19 flights between 1984 and 2002, serves as the vehicle’s primary propulsion.
The SLS is also ready to fly.
Regarding the exorbitant price, Marcia Smith, a space expert based in Washington, said in an email conversation that “Not all the time, money is the most crucial element. Preserving employment—not just any jobs, but high-tech ones in a field critical to national security—is a major driver for SLS.”
“Do you want to put all of your eggs in the billionaire space enthusiast basket if it is important for your country to lead the world in space exploration? Bet all you have on individuals who may change their minds, leave, become sick, or experience worse? They have just one point of failure.”
The “narrative might alter” if the SLS has a catastrophic failure, she said. “Even so, I’m not certain. The private sector’s dependability is not universally seen as being sufficient to stake the nation’s leadership in space on public-private partnerships.”
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