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30.04.2021

SLS core stage arrives at KSC but faces “challenging” schedule

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WASHINGTON — The final major element of the first Space Launch System rocket arrived at the Kennedy Space Center, but NASA’s acting administrator says it will be “challenging” to launch the rocket before the end of this year.

The barge Pegasus arrived at KSC April 27 with the core stage of the SLS on board. Pegasus transported the core stage from the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, where it had been since early 2020 for the Green Run test campaign that culminated in a full-duration static-fire test March 18.

NASA will transport the core stage to the Vehicle Assembly Building, where workers will attach to it its two five-segment solid rocket boosters, upper stage and Orion spacecraft. It will then be rolled out to Launch Complex 39B for final tests and, ultimately, the Artemis 1 launch.

“With the delivery of the SLS core stage for Artemis 1, we have all the parts of the rocket at Kennedy for the first Artemis mission,” John Honeycutt, SLS program manager at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, said in a statement.

That launch is notionally scheduled for late this year, although NASA has not provided an updated launch date for the uncrewed test flight. The NASA statement about the arrival of the core stage at KSC did not mention its launch date.

NASA Acting Administrator Steve Jurczyk, speaking at an April 27 Space Transportation Association webinar, said the plan is still to launch Artemis 1 before the end of the year. “We’re still trying our best to get that launch off by the end of this calendar year,” he said. “That will be challenging given some of the delays that we had.”

Those delays, he said, include the technical challenges suffered by the core stage during the Green Run tests, as well as those caused by weather and the pandemic. Jurczyk said later that those issues consumed nearly all of the margin in the schedule for a launch this year.

“The schedule for Artemis 1 will be really challenging,” he said. “If things go really, really well on integration of SLS and integrating Orion on the mobile launch platform and rolling out, we have a chance to launch by the end of the calendar year.”

“But this is first-time flow on a vehicle at KSC,” he added, meaning that this is the first time they have gone through the steps of assembling the vehicle components and going through prelaunch processing. “We’ll undoubtedly encounter some challenges, so we don’t have a lot of schedule reserve against launching by the end of the calendar year.”

“If we can hit those major milestones and make progress, we’ve got a shot,” he said. “If we start missing those milestones, then may have to think about whether we can make it this year or not.”

Bill Nelson, the Biden administration’s nominee to be NASA administrator, hinted at his confirmation hearing April 21 that the launch might slip to next year. “The first of the Artemis mission launches within the next year,” he stated in the written version of his opening statement, a time frame that would extend into early 2022.

“At the end of the year, perhaps early next year, you’re going to see the largest rocket ever — most powerful — launched,” he said of SLS during the hearing. “It will be the workhorse on the program of going back to the moon and then on to Mars.”

Quelle: SN

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Final piece of massive moon rocket arrives at KSC

 

Mike Bolger has been waiting eight years for this day. On Thursday morning he watched the final part of the most powerful rocket in the world arrive at Kennedy Space Center.

“We’ve now got all the pieces. We’ve got the boosters, we’ve got the core stage showing up today. We’ve already got the second stage here and Orion. So, all the hardware is here. Really the spotlight turns to us and it’s our opportunity to put it all together,” he said.

The massive core stage, which arrived by barge from Mississippi, is the backbone of the Space Launch System, NASA’s deep space rocket built for human space travel. Built by Boeing, the core stage is over 200 feet long and houses the flight computers and avionics as well as the fuel that powers the stage’s four engines.

The SLS is slated to launch later this year on an uncrewed test flight as part of NASA’s Artemis program to send the first woman to the moon.

As head of NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems, Bolger oversees the team that gets the rocket ready for liftoff.

“It’s our Super Bowl moment if you will. It’s our time to charge down the field and to really make this happen,” he said.

Prior to its journey to Cape Canaveral, the core stage’s four engines were put to the test at NASA’s Stennis Space Center. The first full duration test fire in January aborted early due to conservative test parameters. Engineers ran the test again in March, that time igniting the engines for the full mission duration of eight minutes.

To make up time, the manufacturers of the engines, Aerojet Rocketdyne, hustled to process the engines as quickly as possible.

“Boeing gave us a challenge of 30 days and we beat that. We had refurbishments done and ready for shipment in 29 days,” said Bill Muddle, a lead engineer on the RS-25 engine program.

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