Reuters
Joey Roulette and Steve Gorman
Publication date: Nov 15, 2022 • 54 min ago • 4 min read Join the discussion
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CAPE CANAVERAL — Ground teams at the Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday began fueling NASA’s next-generation moon rocket for its first launch, a flight to launch the U.S. space agency’s Artemis program 50 years after the last Apollo lunar mission. The 32-story Space Launch System (SLS) rocket was scheduled to blast off from Cape Canaveral in 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 on board.
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NASA managers on Monday gave the go ahead with flight preparations after 10 weeks marred by multiple mechanical difficulties, hurricanes and two excursions that took the spacecraft from its hangar to the launch pad. Launch attempts on August 29 and September 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. Subsequent inspections found that the storm had peeled off a strip of ultra-thin sealing material from Orion’s exterior, but NASA officials said Monday that the damage was minor and posed a negligible risk to the mission, even if more was lost during the launch. .
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Weather is always a factor beyond NASA’s control. The latest forecast called for an 80 percent chance of favorable conditions during Wednesday’s two-hour launch window, NASA said. On Tuesday afternoon, launch teams began the long and delicate process of filling the core fuel tanks with several hundred thousand gallons of supercooled liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen propellant. Named Artemis I, the mission marks the first flight of the SLS rocket and Orion capsule together, built by Boeing Co and Lockheed Martin Corp, respectively, under contract to NASA. It also marks a major shift in direction for NASA’s post-Apollo human spaceflight program after decades of focusing on low Earth orbit with space shuttles and the International Space Station. (See graphic)
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SUCCESSOR OF APOLLO Named after the ancient Greek goddess of the hunt – and twin sister of Apollo – 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 Cold War era of the US-Soviet space race, was less scientific than Artemis. 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 aims to put the vehicle through its paces on a rigorous test flight, pushing its design boundaries to prove the spacecraft is fit to carry astronauts.
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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 . Billed as the world’s most powerful, complex rocket, SLS represents the largest new vertical launch system NASA has built since the Apollo-era Saturn V. Barring last-minute malfunctions, the countdown to launch should end with the rocket’s four R-25 main engines and two solid-rocket boosters firing, sending the spacecraft hurtling skyward. About 90 minutes after liftoff, the rocket’s upper stage will push Orion out of Earth orbit en route for a 25-day flight that brings it within 60 miles (97 km) 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 collapse on December 11.
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Although there will be no humans on board, Orion will carry a simulated crew of three – one male and two female mannequins – equipped with sensors to measure radiation levels and other stresses the astronauts will face. A top goal is to test the durability of Orion’s heat shield during re-entry 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 the -entrances 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 degrees 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 the total cost of Artemis at $93 billion by 2025. NASA calls the program 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 Will Dunham, Lisa Shumaker and Gerry Doyle)
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