The countdown clocks for NASA’s long-awaited mission to fly an unpiloted Orion crew capsule around the moon and back started ticking on Saturday, and the launch of the agency’s brand-new Space Launch System rocket is scheduled to take place on Monday. At 10:23 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time, Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, who was NASA’s first female launch director, ordered her crew to their stations in Firing Room 1 at the Kennedy Space Center and started the meticulously rehearsed countdown. The countdown would last for 46 hours and 10 minutes.
It is anticipated that engineers will begin pumping 750,000 gallons of liquid oxygen and hydrogen fuel into the core stage of the massive SLS rocket just after midnight on Monday. This will set the stage for the launch, which is scheduled to take place at 8:33 a.m., the beginning of a two-hour window. The weather forecasters are estimating a 70% possibility of pleasant conditions.
A 4-inch liquid hydrogen quick-disconnect connection had a leak during a rehearsal countdown and fuelling test that took place on June 20. The condition of this fitting is now unknown as the countdown approaches.
Once the rocket was brought back to the assembly facility at NASA, the fitting could then be rectified. However, hydrogen leaks normally don’t become apparent until the equipment is subjected to cryogenic temperatures (in this instance, temperatures of minus 423 degrees Fahrenheit), and because fuelling won’t begin until Monday morning, this won’t happen until after the weekend.
The launch will be canceled if it is discovered that a leak exceeds the established safety criteria. However, Blackwell-Thompson asserts that she has full faith that the fitting will function appropriately.
She said this in an interview: “You don’t really get the whole test until you conduct it at cryogenic settings.” [Cryogenic conditions] “As a result, we are of the opinion that we have done all possible to resolve this problem; nevertheless, on the day of launch, as a component of our loading, we will know for certain.”
It will be an important step forward for NASA and its Artemis program if the SLS rocket, which cost $4.1 billion, is successfully launched into space. The Artemis program has the goal of landing the first woman and the next man on the moon in the time range of 2025-2026.
The primary objectives of the 42-day Artemis 1 mission are to verify the performance of the enormous SLS rocket, to put the Orion crew capsule through its paces, and to bring it back to Earth safely while making certain that the capsule’s 16.5-foot-wide heat shield is capable of protecting returning astronauts from the high-speed heat of reentry.
During the course of the mission, scientists will use an instrumented mannequin named Moonikin Campos who is outfitted with a spacesuit as well as two artificial female torsos to help them measure the radiation environment of deep space along with the vibrations, sound levels, accelerations, temperatures, and pressures in the crew cabin.
If everything goes according to plan, NASA intends to launch four real astronauts on a looping free-return trajectory around the moon in late 2024. This will be followed by a mission to land two astronauts near the moon’s south pole as early as 2025. If everything goes according to plan, NASA plans to continue with these plans.
The success of that voyage will be determined in large part by SpaceX’s ability to create a lander that is based on the architecture of its future Starship rocket. However, very little specifics about the work that the firm has made or NASA’s intentions have been disclosed.
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