Reuters
Joey Roulette and Steve Gorman
Publication date: Nov 15, 2022 • 52 min ago • 4 min read • Join discussion
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CAPE CANAVERAL — Ground teams at the Kennedy Space Center prepared Tuesday for a third launch attempt of NASA’s next-generation towering moon rocket, the first flight of the U.S. space agency’s Artemis lunar program 50 years after the last Apollo mission to the moon. The 32-story Space Launch System (SLS) rocket was scheduled to blast off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 1:04 a.m. EST (0604 GMT) on Wednesday to send the Orion capsule on a 25-day trip around the Moon and back without astronauts.
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NASA’s flight readiness crews were eager for success after 10 weeks plagued by mechanical difficulties, two hurricanes and two trips from the spacecraft hangar to the launch pad. Two previous launch attempts, on Aug. 29 and Sept. 3, were aborted due to fuel line leaks and other technical problems that NASA has since resolved. While docked at the launch pad last week, the rocket endured strong winds and rain from Hurricane Nicole, forcing a two-day flight delay. Inspections after the storm found that the hurricane had torn a strip of ultra-thin protective sealant from Orion’s exterior, but NASA officials said Monday night that the damage was minor and posed a negligible risk to the launch. Weather is always a factor beyond NASA’s control. The latest forecast on Monday called for a 90 percent chance of favorable conditions during Wednesday’s two-hour launch window, according to the US space agency at Cape Canaveral.
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Named Artemis I, the mission marks the first flight of the SLS rocket and Orion capsule together, built under NASA contracts with Boeing Co and Lockheed Martin Corp, respectively. It also marks a major shift in direction for NASA’s post-Apollo human spaceflight program, after decades focused on low-Earth orbit with space shuttles and the International Space Station. (Graphic: SUCCESSOR OF APOLLO Named after the Greek goddess of the hunt – and Apollo’s twin sister – Artemis aims to return astronauts to the surface of the Moon as early as 2025. Twelve astronauts walked on the moon during six Apollo missions from 1969 to 1972, the only space flights that have yet placed humans on the lunar surface. But Apollo, born out of the US-Soviet space race during the Cold War, was less scientific than Artemis.
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The new moon program has enlisted commercial partners such as Elon Musk’s SpaceX and the European, Canadian and Japanese space agencies to eventually create a long-term lunar base as a stepping stone for even more ambitious human journeys to Mars. Getting the SLS-Orion spacecraft off the ground is a key first step. Its maiden voyage is intended to put the 5.75 million-pound vehicle through a rigorous test flight, pushing the limits of its design to prove the spacecraft is fit to carry astronauts. If the mission succeeds, a crewed Artemis II flight around the moon and back could take place as early as 2024, followed within a few years by the program’s first lunar landing of astronauts, one of them a woman, on Artemis III .
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Billed as the world’s most powerful, complex rocket, SLS represents the largest new vertical launch system the US space agency has built since the Apollo-era Saturn V. Barring last-minute difficulties, the launch countdown should end with the rocket’s four R-25 main engines and its two solid-rocket boosters firing to produce 8.8 million pounds of thrust, sending the spacecraft moving towards the sky. About 90 minutes after liftoff, the rocket’s upper stage will push Orion out of Earth’s orbit en route for a 25-day flight that will bring it within 60 miles of the Moon’s surface before traveling 40,000 miles (64,374 km). ) beyond the Moon and back to Earth. The capsule is expected to launch into the Pacific on December 11.
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Although there will be no humans, Orion will carry a simulated crew of three – one male and two female mannequins – equipped with sensors to measure radiation levels and other stresses that real astronauts will experience. A top goal of the mission is to test the durability of Orion’s heat shield during reentry as it slams into Earth’s atmosphere at 24,500 miles (39,429 km) per hour, or 32 times the speed of sound, on its return from lunar orbit. – much faster than capsule re-entries returning from the space station. The heat shield is designed to withstand reentry friction that is expected to raise temperatures outside the capsule to nearly 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,760 Celsius). More than a decade in development with years of delays and budget overruns, the SLS-Orion spacecraft has so far cost NASA at least $37 billion, including design, construction, testing and ground facilities. NASA’s Office of Inspector General has projected that the total cost of Artemis will reach $93 billion by 2025. NASA defends the program as a boon to space exploration that has created tens of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in commerce. (Reporting by Joey Roulette in Cape Canaveral, Fla., and Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Gerry Doyle)
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