Agence France-Presse
January 9, 2024
Illustration of the moon and Earth (Shutterstock)
NASA is holding a briefing Tuesday in which it is widely expected to push back the timeline for the Artemis missions to return astronauts to the Moon, amid delays to the delivery of key components by contractors.
Artemis, named after the sister of Apollo in Greek mythology, was officially announced in 2017 as part of the US space agency's plans to establish a sustained presence on Earth's nearest space neighbor, and apply lessons learned there for a future mission to Mars.
Its first mission, an uncrewed test flight to the Moon and back called Artemis 1, took place in 2022, after several postponements.
According to the current plan the Artemis 2 launch, involving a crew that doesn't land on the surface, is set for late this year.
Artemis 3, in which the first woman and first person of color are to set foot on lunar soil, should take place in 2025 at the Moon's south pole, where NASA hopes to exploit the ice to produce rocket fuel.
NASA is also looking to build a lunar space station called Gateway where spacecraft will dock during later missions.
Elon Musk's SpaceX has won the contract for a landing system for Artemis 3 based on a version of its prototype Starship rocket, which remains far from ready. Both of its orbital tests have so far ended in explosions.
Delays to Starship have knock-on effects because the spacesuit contractor needs to know how the suits will interface with the spacecraft, and simulators need to be built for astronauts to learn its systems.
What's more, "SpaceX must conduct multiple Starship flight tests and launches before using its lander variant with astronauts for Artemis 3," an official watchdog report published in November 2023 said -- and SpaceX needs to send an uncrewed Starship to the lunar surface and back before the NASA mission.
And the Artemis 1 mission itself revealed technical issues, such as the heat shield on the Orion crew capsule eroded in an unexpected way, and the ground structure used to launch the giant SLS rocket sustained more damage than expected.
As of March 2023, NASA has agreed to pay approximately $40 billion to hundreds of contractors in support of Artemis, the same watchdog found.
A key difference between the 20th-century Apollo missions and the Artemis era is the increasing role of commercial partnerships, part of a broader strategy to involve the private companies in space exploration to reduce costs and to make space more accessible.
For example, the space agency paid the company Astrobotic more than $100 million to carry important scientific probes to a mid-latitude region of the Moon.
That mission, which blasted off this weekend, looks set to fail after suffering a critical loss of fuel due to a problem with its propulsion system.
© 2024 AFP
Artemis 3, in which the first woman and first person of color are to set foot on lunar soil, should take place in 2025 at the Moon's south pole, where NASA hopes to exploit the ice to produce rocket fuel.
NASA is also looking to build a lunar space station called Gateway where spacecraft will dock during later missions.
Elon Musk's SpaceX has won the contract for a landing system for Artemis 3 based on a version of its prototype Starship rocket, which remains far from ready. Both of its orbital tests have so far ended in explosions.
Delays to Starship have knock-on effects because the spacesuit contractor needs to know how the suits will interface with the spacecraft, and simulators need to be built for astronauts to learn its systems.
What's more, "SpaceX must conduct multiple Starship flight tests and launches before using its lander variant with astronauts for Artemis 3," an official watchdog report published in November 2023 said -- and SpaceX needs to send an uncrewed Starship to the lunar surface and back before the NASA mission.
And the Artemis 1 mission itself revealed technical issues, such as the heat shield on the Orion crew capsule eroded in an unexpected way, and the ground structure used to launch the giant SLS rocket sustained more damage than expected.
As of March 2023, NASA has agreed to pay approximately $40 billion to hundreds of contractors in support of Artemis, the same watchdog found.
A key difference between the 20th-century Apollo missions and the Artemis era is the increasing role of commercial partnerships, part of a broader strategy to involve the private companies in space exploration to reduce costs and to make space more accessible.
For example, the space agency paid the company Astrobotic more than $100 million to carry important scientific probes to a mid-latitude region of the Moon.
That mission, which blasted off this weekend, looks set to fail after suffering a critical loss of fuel due to a problem with its propulsion system.
© 2024 AFP
Mammoth rocket stage for Blue Origin New Glenn goes for sideways ride on Space Coast
2024/01/10
2024/01/10
A caravan transports a Blue Origin New Glenn rocket first stage past the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center on Wednesday, Jan. 10, 2024, in Florida.
- Richard Tribou/Orlando Sentinel/TNS
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER — A first stage of Blue Origin’s massive New Glenn rocket became king of the road for a day making a trip from the factory to its launch complex on Wednesday.
Transported by a series of multiwheeled carriages and an arching structure, the 189-foot-tall first stage for what will be a 320-foot-tall rocket when fully assembled traveled horizontally on a 22-mile trip from the New Glenn factory in Merritt Island through Kennedy Space Center over to Cape Canaveral Space Force Station where Blue Origin has a hangar and launch pad at Launch Complex 36.
The slow-rolling caravan took up all lanes as it paused for several minutes before passing by the Vehicle Assembly Building at KSC, drawing a crowd of curious onlookers.
Jeff Bezos late last year stated that he was optimistic New Glenn could still make its first-ever launch by the end of 2024.
The rocket uses seven of Blue Origin’s new BE-4 engines, which just made their first trip to space successfully launching United Launch Alliance’s new Vulcan Centaur on its debut early Monday morning. Vulcan uses just a pair of BE-4s, and has up the five more Vulcan launches slated in 2024 as well.
“Blue Origin delivered the engines for this flight vehicle early last year, the real focus of test activity was getting through qualifications, to qualify BE-4 for flight,” said ULA’s Mark Peller, vice president of Vulcan development ahead of launch last week. “They’ve switched back now to production engines to support our production activities.”
The two engines needed for Vulcan’s next flight are already complete, he said.
“They’re assembled and they’re actually down at their West Texas facility going through final acceptance,” Peller said. “So they’re on track.”
With what are now flight-tested engines, Blue Origin can begin ramping up production, and New Glenn’s first flight could stay on Blue Origin’s 2024 schedule.
Blue Origin officials had no comment about why the first stage was moved Wednesday.
The heavy lift rocket, which features a larger diameter fairing for more payload capacity than its competitors, is designed for reuse similar to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets, but with more power.
The seven BE-4’s can generate early 3.9 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, and the first stages are designed for 25 flights. A Falcon 9 generates 1.7 million pounds of thrust while the new Vulcan Centaur using its maximum six solid rocket boosters can achieve 3.3 million pounds of thrust. A Falcon Heavy, essentially three Falcon 9’s put together, can generate 5.1 million pounds of thrust.
Similar to SpaceX, the boosters will aim for a landing 620 miles downrange in the Atlantic on a landing platform and then return to the launch site to Port Canaveral, where Blue Origin recently installed its a 375-foot-tall tower crane.
The eventual trip from the port back to LC-36, though, will be shorter than the factory ride with the launch site only about 5 miles north of Port Canaveral.
Blue Origin took over the lease for LC-36 in 2015, investing about $1 billion in the pad site alone. It was previously used for government launches from 1962 to 2005, including lunar lander Surveyor 1 in 1967 and some of the Mariner probes.
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© Orlando Sentinel
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER — A first stage of Blue Origin’s massive New Glenn rocket became king of the road for a day making a trip from the factory to its launch complex on Wednesday.
Transported by a series of multiwheeled carriages and an arching structure, the 189-foot-tall first stage for what will be a 320-foot-tall rocket when fully assembled traveled horizontally on a 22-mile trip from the New Glenn factory in Merritt Island through Kennedy Space Center over to Cape Canaveral Space Force Station where Blue Origin has a hangar and launch pad at Launch Complex 36.
The slow-rolling caravan took up all lanes as it paused for several minutes before passing by the Vehicle Assembly Building at KSC, drawing a crowd of curious onlookers.
Jeff Bezos late last year stated that he was optimistic New Glenn could still make its first-ever launch by the end of 2024.
The rocket uses seven of Blue Origin’s new BE-4 engines, which just made their first trip to space successfully launching United Launch Alliance’s new Vulcan Centaur on its debut early Monday morning. Vulcan uses just a pair of BE-4s, and has up the five more Vulcan launches slated in 2024 as well.
“Blue Origin delivered the engines for this flight vehicle early last year, the real focus of test activity was getting through qualifications, to qualify BE-4 for flight,” said ULA’s Mark Peller, vice president of Vulcan development ahead of launch last week. “They’ve switched back now to production engines to support our production activities.”
The two engines needed for Vulcan’s next flight are already complete, he said.
“They’re assembled and they’re actually down at their West Texas facility going through final acceptance,” Peller said. “So they’re on track.”
With what are now flight-tested engines, Blue Origin can begin ramping up production, and New Glenn’s first flight could stay on Blue Origin’s 2024 schedule.
Blue Origin officials had no comment about why the first stage was moved Wednesday.
The heavy lift rocket, which features a larger diameter fairing for more payload capacity than its competitors, is designed for reuse similar to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets, but with more power.
The seven BE-4’s can generate early 3.9 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, and the first stages are designed for 25 flights. A Falcon 9 generates 1.7 million pounds of thrust while the new Vulcan Centaur using its maximum six solid rocket boosters can achieve 3.3 million pounds of thrust. A Falcon Heavy, essentially three Falcon 9’s put together, can generate 5.1 million pounds of thrust.
Similar to SpaceX, the boosters will aim for a landing 620 miles downrange in the Atlantic on a landing platform and then return to the launch site to Port Canaveral, where Blue Origin recently installed its a 375-foot-tall tower crane.
The eventual trip from the port back to LC-36, though, will be shorter than the factory ride with the launch site only about 5 miles north of Port Canaveral.
Blue Origin took over the lease for LC-36 in 2015, investing about $1 billion in the pad site alone. It was previously used for government launches from 1962 to 2005, including lunar lander Surveyor 1 in 1967 and some of the Mariner probes.
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© Orlando Sentinel
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