Samstag, 11. März 2023 - 07:06

Raumfahrt - Startvorbereitung für SLS rocket Artemis 2 mission -Update-1

11.06.2022

Lockheed Martin powers up Artemis 2 Orion, updates status on other capsules

Lockheed Martin has completed the first-time power-up of the Orion capsule for the Artemis 2 mission — the first Orion capsule that will be tasked with carrying humans.

As work continues on that capsule, Lockheed Martin — the prime contractor for the Orion spacecraft — provided updates on the other three capsules, and three European Service Modules, currently in various stages of their respective flows for Artemis missions 1, 2, and 3.

Powering up Artemis 2’s Orion

A significant milestone for all spacecraft is their very first power-up — a milestone the Orion capsule for Artemis 2 achieved the week of May 23.

“We just powered it up for the first time, which is a huge milestone for us because we’ve been working on it now for several years,” said Jules Schneider, Director of Orion Assembly, Test, and Launch Operations at Lockheed Martin — a position responsible for overseeing the assembly and testing of the spacecraft up to the point where it is delivered to NASA.

Schneider himself has been with the Orion program from its inception and was part of the team that drafted the spacecraft’s initial proposal when it was part of the now-canceled Constellation Program.

“We finally got enough of the avionics and the electronics and all the wiring and everything else that’s needed onboard and integrated such that we could power it up for the first time and kind of bring it to life, load flight software, etc.,” related Schneider.

Certain functional checkouts of the capsule’s nascent state are currently being conducted, with Schneider noting that a good deal of assembly and integration work remains for this capsule even though it is far along in its overall build lifecycle.

Meanwhile, this Orion’s European Service Module (ESM) is also at the Kennedy Space Center and undergoing preparations for integrated testing and flight.

“The European Service Module has been integrated to the Crew Module Adapter, which is the part of the Service Module that [Lockheed Martin] builds and tests,” noted Schneider. “That’s all fully integrated. So if you were to walk out on the shop floor, you would see a nearly fully assembled Service Module that still has some work to go and some testing at the module level.”

He continued: “The phase we’re getting into now for Artemis 2 is we’re getting into a more test-centric phase versus an assembly or build phase. We still have some environmental testing to do, we have thermal cycle [tests] at the module levels for both the Crew Module and Service Module. We have direct field acoustics to do at the module level for both Crew Module and Service Module.”

After this, the next step will be vacuum testing on the integrated Orion assembly (which includes the Service Module) before delivering the system to NASA for stacking and flight on the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket.

Quelle: NS

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Update: 13.06.2022

Artemis II engine section moves to final assembly

On May 24, 2022, the core stage production team moved the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket engine section for Artemis II to the core stage final integration area at NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans.

While there, the engine section team is completing installation of the main propulsion systems, finishing integration of the electrical and avionics systems, and preparing for functional testing of the various systems.

During final integration, the team also will install remaining internal thermal protection systems and prepare to position the engine section from vertical to horizontal so that it can be joined with the rest of the core stage.

The engine section is located at the bottom of the core stage and includes the rocket's main propulsion systems that connect to the core stage's four RS-25 engines that will help launch the Artemis II lunar mission.

This fall, the engine section will be horizontally integrated with the previously-joined forward assembly and liquid hydrogen tank to complete the core stage. NASA and core stage lead contractor Boeing are building core stages for the next three Artemis missions.

The 212-foot core stage with its RS-25 engines will provide more than 2 million pounds of thrust at launch. With Artemis, NASA will land the first woman and the first person of color on the Moon and establish long-term exploration in preparation for missions to Mars.

SLS and NASA's Orion spacecraft, along with the commercial human landing system and the Gateway in orbit around the Moon, are NASA's backbone for deep space exploration. SLS is the only rocket that can send Orion, astronauts, and supplies to the Moon in a single mission.

Quelle: SD

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Update: 13.12.2022

NASA will name Artemis II crew in early 2023

The NASA Artemis rocket with the Orion spacecraft aboard leaves the Vehicle Assembly Building moving slowly to pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2022. NASA is aiming for an Aug. 29 liftoff for the lunar test flight. (AP Photo/Terry Renna)

NASA announced Sunday it will name the spaceflight crew of the Artemis II mission in early 2023, following the successful completion of the first phase of its mission to the moon.

Vanessa Wyche, director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center, said at a press conference just hours after the splashdown of the Orion spacecraft that the team wanted to wait until the completion of Artemis I to make an announcement.

“Our intent is — if all is still go and everything looks good — then our plan is to name the crew in early 2023,” she said. “That is our game plan.”

Artemis I sent an unmanned flight around the moon, with the capsuleblazing back down to Earth at more than 32 times the speed of sound on Sunday after traveling more than 40,000 miles past the moon and about 268,000 miles from Earth.

Artemis II will see four astronauts travel around the moon, with a launch expected within the next two years.

The final phase is Artemis III, which will send two astronauts, including a woman and a person of color, onto the lunar surface in 2025 or 2026, for the first time in roughly 50 years.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson on Sunday also mentioned the Artemis program is working toward a long-term goal of landing humans on Mars by the end of the 2030s.

“Space is the place. You see that in the eyes of children, you see it in the interaction of our guys in the blue suits, our astronauts when they walk into any room,” Nelson said. “You see that in a nation that has been riven with partisanship. That doesn’t exist here.”

The Artemis I spacecraft, loaded with three dummies inside, endured temperatures exceeding 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit before it landed in the waters west of Baja California near Guadalupe Island.

NASA, which called the splashdown near perfect, is now working with local responders to get the capsule out of the water and safely back home to its team in Florida.

The successful flight test comes after NASA faced multiple delays caused by hurricanes and technical issues as it attempted to fire the Space Launch System (SLS) megarocket with Orion attached this fall.

In mid-November, the SLS finally lifted off from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center and sent Orion on its maiden journey.

When it splashed down on Sunday, NASA said the first step in the Artemis program was a historic and momentous venture that lays the groundwork for the next missions.

Jim Free, the associate administrator for exploration systems development, said there was still quite a bit of work for the team ahead of an anticipated 2024 launch for Artemis II.

“One thing we’ve always been concerned about is what have we learned from [Artemis I] and are there changes we have to make?” Free said. “That’s some of the work we’ll be going through.”

NASA officials will be reviewing reams of data and conducting analyses of the flight to improve future missions.

Mike Serafin, the Artemis mission manager, said the successful flight of Orion means NASA now has a “foundational deep space transportation system.”

“This is what mission success looks like,” he said.

Quelle: The Hill

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Update: 14.12.2022

After Artemis 1, it will take NASA 2 years to send astronauts to the moon. Why so long?

Artemis 2 is scheduled to launch in 2024, but it may be tough for NASA to hit that target.

Orion's successful splashdown Sunday afternoon (Dec. 11) returned some critical components needed for NASA's Artemis 2 moon mission, which is scheduled to launch 2024 — but it may be tough for the agency to hit that target.

Artemis 1, NASA's first in a series of missions designed to return humanity to the lunar surface, is now complete. On Sunday at 12:40 p.m. EST (1740 GMT), an uncrewed Orion spacecraft splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Baja California, wrapping up its 25.5-day mission to lunar orbit and back.

Artemis 1 launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center, in Florida on Nov. 16 on the debut mission of the agency's huge new Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. Though the premiere of SLS was delayed several times beyond its originally targeted launch date of 2017, the rocket performed perfectly in delivering the Orion spacecraft to Earth orbit.

With Artemis 1 now in the books, public focus is quickly shifting to the program's next phase: crewed flight. But that can't happen until several pieces fall into place — namely, a completely assembled spacecraft and launch vehicle. While NASA engineers and contractors have been busy constructing various elements of the SLS that will launch Artemis 2, key components for the mission's Orion capsule are being reused from Artemis 1 and must first undergo a series of post-flight validation tests before being installed on the new spacecraft. And that's going to take some time.

NASA's decision to reuse some of Orion's flight hardware was made at a time when Artemis 1 was still known as Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1), and the schedule for SLS placed a full three years between the first two launches. A 2017 NASA blog(opens in new tab) post mentions recycling Orion's hardware, stating, "NASA is reusing avionics boxes from the Orion EM-1 crew module for the next flight. Avionics and electrical systems provide the 'nervous system' of launch vehicles and spacecraft, linking diverse systems into a functioning whole."

Artemis 2, or Exploration Mission 2 (EM-2), as it was called at the time, was originally slated to fly on an SLS Block 1B rocket, a larger upgraded version of the SLS used for Artemis 1, which replaces the vehicle's Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS) with the more powerful Exploration Upper Stage (EUS). The three-year gap between EM-1 and EM-2 was meant to allow time for upgrades to the SLS mobile launch platform (MLP) to support the taller SLS Block 1B. Comparatively, NASA's estimated timeline to remove, refurbish and reinstall Orion's avionics hardware was not expected to affect the launch schedule.

By 2018, however, NASA funding appropriations from Congress and agency attempts to quicken SLS' launch cadence led to the decision to construct a second MLP to support the rocket's larger configurations. This move abandoned plans to upgrade the existing MLP, leaving it capable of only launching the SLS Block 1. In turn, the first three flights of SLS were changed to fly in the Block 1 configuration. While this shortened the lull between missions, it also ended up putting a magnifying glass over the decision to reuse some of Orion's avionics.

According to a November 2022 report(opens in new tab) from the NASA Office of Inspector General (OIG), "[NASA's] Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate considers the non-core avionics reuse to be the primary critical path for the Artemis 2 mission, with total preparation work between missions to take about 27 months." "Critical path" the report explains, "is the sequence of tasks that determines the minimum duration of time needed to complete a project." In short, Artemis 2 can only launch as soon as the most time-consuming task on engineers' checklists is complete. That task will likely be the processing and reinstallation of Artemis 1 hardware.

"Non-core," in this case, refers to a subset of hardware aboard Orion, as opposed to "core" avionics, and helps differentiate between some of what will and won't be reused from the spacecraft's first flight. "There are connectors that can be demated," explained one NASA engineer to Space.com. So, the avionics boxes' removal and installation on the Artemis 2 Orion capsule will be more akin to unplugging your home office to transfer from one room to another than to ripping up your drywall to rewire your house. But before those components can be installed in the Orion for Artemis 2, they need to be tested.

With Artemis 1 complete and Orion back on Earth, technicians will now study the spacecraft and its systems to determine how well it performed in flight. Many on-board experiments for Artemis 1 focused on radiation exposure, including the mannequins Helga and Zohar as part of the Matroshka AstroRad Radiation Experiment (MARE). Nearly a dozen other active and passive dosimeters are scattered throughout the capsule as well.

Radiation in space can have significant impacts on flight systems as well as biological ones. Therefore, extensive efforts are taken when designing a spacecraft to protect crews and hardware from exposure. Aboard the International Space Station (ISS), NASA has studied the effects of microgravity and radiation on the human body for more than 20 years. However, exposure levels in deep space and around the moon are much higher than in low Earth orbit (LEO), where the ISS operates.

On its maiden voyage around the moon, Orion flew farther from Earth than any spacecraft designed to carry humans, reaching a distance of 268,563 miles (432,210 kilometers) on Nov. 28, beating the record set by the Apollo 13 mission by nearly 20,000 miles (32,186 km). Barring any off-nominal findings from the Artemis 1 flight data, NASA plans to fly four astronauts aboard Artemis 2 on a trajectory around the moon, reaching a maximum altitude of 5,523 miles (8,889 km) above the Moon's surface, according to the European Space Agency (ESA). That would place them second behind the Apollo 13 astronauts, who got farther from Earth while troubleshooting a near-disaster that prevented them from landing on the moon as planned.

Unlike Artemis 1, the crew aboard Orion on Artemis 2 won't technically enter lunar orbit. For Orion's first excursion to the moon, the SLS core stage launched the spacecraft and the ICPS into Earth orbit, and the ICPS performed a translunar injection burn to put Orion on course for the moon. There, Orion's service module placed the spacecraft in a distant retrograde orbit (DRO), where it remained from Nov. 25 to Dec. 1. On Dec. 5, the capsule headed back toward Earth via a long engine burn conducted during a close lunar flyby. In total, the Artemis 1 mission lasted about 25.5 days.

The Artemis 2 crew won't get to enjoy their mission for quite as long; Orion's second lunar expedition is scheduled to last just over 10 days. After completing some extended laps around the Earth, the flight path for Artemis 2 puts Orion on a path to return from a lunar flyby without slowing the spacecraft's trajectory enough to maintain a stable lunar orbit.

Artemis 1 mission manager Mike Sarafin explained in a briefing on Nov. 28. "Four astronauts will fly a one-day, highly elliptical orbit to basically shake down the life support system and perform a proximity operations demonstration with the upper stage before it is separated at a far distance from Orion. And then at the end of that one-day high Earth orbit, Orion will essentially perform a mission completion maneuver and use the service module to perform the translunar injection maneuver and put itself on a free-return trajectory — about 4.5 days out [to the moon] and about 4.5 days back. So it'll be a little over 10 days."

Currently, NASA is targeting sometime in 2024 for the launch of Artemis 2. However, if the clock to transfer Orion's avionics boxes started the moment of splashdown, the 27 months estimated by NASA's OIG to complete the task already pushes the agency's 2024 goal into 2025. The next mission after that, Artemis 3, is not dependent on any of Artemis 2's flight hardware. It is dependent, however, on a host of other milestones, making it unlikely that the mission, currently slated for 2025, will launch on time either.

Artemis 3 is designed to land crews on the moon's surface — specifically, the lunar south polar region. This will require a landing system for ferrying crews to and from the lunar surface (SpaceX's huge new Starship vehicle) and new spacesuits for astronauts to wear while performing moonwalks or cislunar extravehicular activities (EVAs). For all of these things to be ready in time for a 2025 moon landing would be a monumental feat for NASA and its partners.

NASA also plans to build a small moon-orbiting space station called Gateway as part of the Artemis program. Gateway's timely construction hinges on a number of factors falling into place, not least of which is a rocket powerful enough to launch the station's various modules, and also a launch tower to support that rocket. NASA selected SpaceX's Falcon Heavy to launch the first Gateway components in late 2024 but has stated the need for the SLS Block 1B and other upgraded variations to launch additional station modules and other habitation hardware needed for long-term lunar stays.

And the second MLP, designated ML-2, required to support those future SLS rockets hasn't even begun construction yet. After Congress' budget appropriations for a second launch tower, NASA selected Bechtel as the project's primary contractor. Now, years later, the undertaking is still in the design and planning phases and will likely cost 2.5 times higher than originally projected, totaling nearly $1 billion and counting.

A NASA OIG report from June 2022(opens in new tab) indicates that ML-2 will likely not be ready for operational use until the end of 2026, placing the earliest possible launch for an SLS Block 1B sometime in 2027. The report reads, in part, "as of May 2022, design work on the ML-2 was still incomplete, and Bechtel officials do not expect construction to begin until the first quarter of fiscal year 2023 at the earliest. To complete contract requirements and deliver an operational ML-2, Bechtel estimates it will need an additional $577.1 million, bringing the structure's total projected cost to $960.1 million coupled with an October 2025 rather than March 2023 delivery date. We expect further cost increases as inevitable technical challenges arise when ML-2 construction begins."

Now, a successful lunar landing on Artemis 3 may not necessarily hinge on whether or not any components of Gateway are in place in time to support the mission. In 2021, NASA awarded SpaceX the agency's Human Landing System (HLS) contract to build a lunar lander for the Artemis program, based on the company's Starship spacecraft currently still under development. It's worth noting that, once operational, SpaceX's Super Heavy rocket required to launch Starship will be more powerful than SLS, cheaper and faster to produce, and will be reusable.

With some refueling along the way, Starship is also expected to be capable of reaching the moon, then return to Earth following a lunar landing, eliminating the need to transfer crew or cargo between vehicles along the way. However, NASA's current framework for Artemis 3 still outlines a crewed Orion launch and an HLS rendezvous in lunar orbit before landing astronauts on the lunar surface. The first orbital launch attempt for SpaceX's Starship is expected early in 2023, but it's unclear when the giant vehicle will be fully operational.

Even if Starship is ready by 2025, the spacesuits astronauts need to traverse the lunar surface may not be. Indeed, NASA has a bit of a spacesuit problem. The spacesuits currently used for ISS EVAs are remnants of the 1980s and '90s, when NASA contractor ILC Dover supplied 18 EVA suits for use on the space shuttleand eventually the space station. Of those, 11 remain, and they are split between the ISS and NASA's testing facility at the Johnson Space Center.

After the space shuttle program was canceled in 2011, ILC Dover provided the remaining suits with some major upgrades, which allowed them to be stored on orbit aboard the ISS long-term, but a NASA OIG report(opens in new tab) from 2017 paints a bleak picture for a spacesuitdevelopment timeline favorable to the ISS or Artemis. The report raises the concern that current suit inventory may be inadequate to last through the space station's life expectancy. "NASA will be challenged to continue to support ISS needs with the current fleet of EMUs [(extravehicular mobility units)] through 2024, a challenge that will escalate significantly if station operations are extended to 2028," the report reads. NASA officials have repeatedly stated throughout the past year their hope to fly the ISS until at least 2030.

An entirely different spacesuit is needed for the Artemis missions, however. A 2018 NASA OIG report(opens in new tab) points out that even new EVA suits for the ISS wouldn't "offer the mobility, durability, or functionality planetary or cislunar missions will require." The report also stresses the need for NASA to test new EVA suits in microgravity or "accept higher levels of risk during future exploration missions, potentially impacting astronaut health and safety as well as mission success."

At the time of that report, the schedule for ISS technology demonstrations projected new EVA suit tests to take place between 2024 and 2025. For Artemis, the only opportunity to test a spacesuit in lunar orbit before an Artemis 3 landing attempt will be during Artemis 2, and another OIG report(opens in new tab), this one from last year, cast further skepticism on NASA's ability to keep to the agency's stated timeline. NASA's Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Units (xEMU), as the suits are known, spent a slow decade in development, and burned through over a billion dollars, the report indicates.

"The Agency faces significant challenges in meeting this goal," the report reads. "This schedule includes approximately a 20-month delay in delivery for the planned design, verification, and testing suit, two qualification suits, an ISS Demo suit, and two lunar flight suits. These delays — attributable to funding shortfalls, COVID-19 impacts, and technical challenges — have left no schedule margin for delivery of the two flight-ready xEMUs. Given the integration requirements, the suits would not be ready for flight until April 2025 at the earliest."

NASA took the OIG report's findings seriously and made the decision to outsource the efforts in order to expedite suit readiness for both the ISS and Artemis. In June of this year, NASA tapped companies Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace (working with ILC Dover) to develop new spacesuits, and in September selected Axiom to provide the suits astronauts will wear on the surface of the moon. Axiom is also seeking to install its own module on the ISS by 2024, to serve as the core of a new private space station, and operated Ax-1 in April of this year, the first of a handful of planned privately crewed missions to the ISS. So it is feasible the company could test its spacesuit in the microgravity environment available in LEO, if not on Artemis 2.

Publicly, NASA is still voicing confidence in a 2024 launch for Artemis 2, but with the agency's own internal documents suggesting otherwise, it may only be a matter of time before that messaging is changed. So, for now, everyone who was awestruck by the sight of Artemis 1 leaving the planet in a blaze of light will have to practice patience while waiting for the next SLS to light up the sky.

Quelle: SC

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Update: 30.12.2022

Jeremy Hansen: Canada Preparing for the Artemis II Mission

Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut Jeremy Hansen speaks to media representatives and CSA employees prior to NASA's press conference with the Expedition 58/59 crew. The event was held at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston and broadcast live at the CSA. David Saint-Jacques and his crewmates Anne C. McClain (NASA) and Oleg Kononenko (Roscosmos) answered questions about their upcoming mission to the International Space Station. Credit: Canadian Space Agency.

As the longest serving astronaut with the Canadian Space Agency — he was selected in May 2009 — former CF-18 fighter pilot Col. Jeremy Hansen has fulfilled many duties in support of the CSA and NASA.

“My role has kind of evolved over time,” Hansen told SpaceQ. Due to his many public appearances in Canada, the US and the world as a Canadian astronaut, “I feel like I’ve become a bit of a Space Ambassador to help people understand what’s possible [and] to share different strategies that are working with respect to commercialization in space,” he said. “This has become a passion project for me.”

Beyond spreading the good word about space, Hansen is involved in the development of ‘Connected Care Medical Modules’ to take care of astronauts in flight. He is also training to be an Artemis mission CAPCOM (Capsule Communicator, the direct radio link between Mission Control and astronauts in space). This role allowed him to have a front seat during the recent unmanned Artemis I mission to the Moon.

“Having a few opportunities to sit in Mission Control while the Orion capsule was on its way to the Moon, orbiting the Moon, and then on its way home was pretty spectacular,” said Hansen. “Of course, the CAPCOM console is all about supporting the astronauts on a vehicle, and we didn’t have any astronauts on that vehicle, as we all know. So the CAPCOM console didn’t have any official roles, but what we do have to do is understand how we are going to integrate with the team the next time when we do have astronauts on board the vehicle.”

Based on the success of the Artemis I mission — “it went a lot smoother than I think anyone could realistically expect for a first test flight” — Hansen expects the manned Artemis II moon shot to take place sometime in 2024. “It’s very exciting for us at the Canadian Space Agency because we know we’re going to have a Canadian astronaut on Artemis II, which is amazing,” he said. “And I think what’s really important is for Canadians to understand that they should be really proud that we were invited to participate in Artemis II.”

Canada has been given this seat due to the “real value” this country brings to NASA through technology like the Space Shuttle’s Canadarm, the International Space Station’s Canadarm2, and now Canadarm3 for the Moon-orbiting Gateway space station, he explained. “Developing space robotics for deep space is a very different problem than Low Earth Orbit space robotics,” said Hansen. “You get one shot at it: You send your robotic arm out there and it just has to work.”

Fortunately, Canada has “the track record and the technology and the expertise to take on that problem,” he said. As well, “we’ve recently announced that we’ll be sending a rover to the Moon to help with the Artemis program and understanding how we will explore in the South Polar region of the Moon.”

Both of these are major contributions to NASA’s Moon and Mars missions, and explain why, “as a credible partner, we’ve been invited to fly on Artemis II,” said Hansen. Again, “I hope Canadians are proud of that, and I hope it makes them understand that we can do some incredible things if we just set big goals.”

As for which Canadian astronaut will be flying on Artemis II, plus an ISS mission coming up in 2025? “All of these things are fluid, and that’s why no decisions have been made yet,” said Hansen. He expects those astronaut assignments to be made “in the next first half of next year or earlier.”

Quelle: spaceQ

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Update: 9.01.2023

Work begins to harvest Orion spacecraft hardware for Artemis 2 lunar flight

A truck carrying NASA’s Orion spacecraft from the Artemis 1 test flight arrived back at Kennedy Space Center on Dec. 30. Credit: NASA

Fresh off the 1.4-million-mile Artemis 1 test flight around around the moon, NASA’s Orion spacecraft arrived Dec. 30 back at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where technicians will offload propellants and payloads, and begin removing internal hardware destined to fly back to the moon with astronauts on the next Orion crew capsule in 2024.

The 9-t0n, 16.5-foot-wide (5-meter) spacecraft journeyed from U.S. Naval Base San Diego to Kennedy Space Center by road inside a climate-controlled transport container. NASA said the Orion crew module arrived at Kennedy on Dec. 30. Ground teams moved the spacecraft inside the Multi-Payload Processing Facility for post-flight servicing.

The Orion spacecraft splashed down under parachutes Dec. 11 in the Pacific Ocean west of Baja California, completing a highly successful demonstration mission that carried the capsule deeper into space than any spacecraft designed to carry people into space and return them to Earth. The mission lifted off from Kennedy Space Center on Nov. 16 aboard the first flight of NASA’s Space Launch System moon rocket, a super-heavy lift launcher that generated more thrust at liftoff than any NASA-developed rocket in history.

With the Orion spacecraft back at its home port, technicians will drain leftover hazardous propellants from the capsule and open the hatch to remove instrumented mannequins that rode to the moon and back on the Artemis 1 test flight. Teams will also remove a biological science package from the Orion spacecraft’s pressurized cabin. Sensors on the mannequins collected data on radiation, acceleration, and vibration on the 25-day mission.

And the Orion spacecraft’s heat shield will be removed for analysis. The heat shield is covered in an ablative material called Avcoat, the same thermal protector used on NASA’s Apollo command module and on an Orion test flight in Earth orbit in 2014. Engineers changed the design of the heat shield after the 2014 test flight, replacing a honeycomb structure with more than 330,000 individually filled Avcoat cells to a block design with fewer than 200 molded segments.

A top priority for the ground team at Kennedy Space Center will be removing hardware from the Artemis 1 spacecraft for reuse on Artemis 2, the moon program’s first flight with astronauts. Eight avionics boxes flown and a crew seat flown on Artemis 1 will be reused on Artemis 2.

The avionics units, which include inertial measurement units, GPS receivers, and phased array antennas, will be retested to ensure they remain healthy after the Artemis 1 mission. Then technicians will install the hardware on the Orion crew module for Artemis 2, which is inside the Operations and Checkout Building at Kennedy Space Center.

NASA’s Orion spacecraft, still in its transport container, inside the Multi-Payload Processing Facility at Kennedy Space Center on Dec. 30. Credit: NASA

NASA decided years ago to reuse some of the hardware elements from Artemis 1 on Artemis 2 as a cost-saving measure.

The Artemis 2 mission will launch a crew of four astronauts on the second flight of NASA’s SLS moon rocket. The trajectory will take the four-person crew on a 10-day flight looping around the far side of the moon and back to Earth.

NASA officials have said it will take about two years to prepare the Artemis 2 spacecraft for launch after Artemis 1, a schedule largely driven by harvesting and recycling hardware from the Orion capsule that just returned from space.

“Right now, we’re still looking at that two-year timeframe from Artemis 1 to 2,” said Jim Free, associate administrator of NASA’s exploration systems mission directorate, in November.

Managers also want ample time to incorporate lessons learned from Artemis 1 into Artemis 2. The Artemis 1 mission was nearly flawless, with only a handful of relatively minor issues during the nearly month-long test flight. Ground teams at Kennedy are also optimistic they can accomplish work on the Artemis 2 spacecraft faster than they did on Artemis 1.

“We obviously want to try and do it quicker,” Free said.

A camera on NASA’s Orion spacecraft captured this view Dec. 5 during a flyby of the moon on the return journey to Earth. The crescent Earth is visible at right. Credit: NASA

Officials originally tagged 16 avionics units from Artemis 1 for reuse on Artemis 2. But after delays in launching Artemis 1, managers decided to reassign eight avionics elements from the Artemis 3 spacecraft and other future vehicles to the Orion capsule for Artemis 2, according to Tonya Ladwig, Orion program manager at Lockheed Martin, the spacecraft’s prime contractor.

Under NASA’s Artemis program architecture, the Artemis 3 mission will be the first flight to attempt a crew lunar landing, a goal NASA says it could accomplish as soon as 2025. NASA’s inspector general has reported that the agency is unlikely to meet that schedule due to concerns about the readiness of a human-rated lunar lander and new spacesuits needed for walking on the moon.

The Artemis 3 Orion spacecraft will dock in lunar orbit with a commercial human-rated lander derived from SpaceX’s Starship mega-rocket. The Starship will ferry the astronauts from the Orion spacecraft to the lunar surface, then back to Orion for return to Earth.

NASA hopes additional Artemis missions later in the 2020s will establish a cadence of lunar flights about once per year. But hardware production and the behind-schedule construction of a new mobile launch platform at Kennedy will likely prevent NASA from achieving the annual Artemis launch cadence, at least through Artemis 4, according to the agency’s inspector general.

NASA’s Orion spacecraft was offloaded from the USS Portland recovery ship at U.S. Naval Base San Diego on Dec. 14, three days after splashdown in the Pacific Ocean on Dec. 11. Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

Eventually, NASA and Lockheed Martin want to reuse entire Orion crew modules.

Artemis 1 flew with a flight battery and two flight harnesses harvested from the Orion spacecraft from the 2014 test flight in Earth orbit. Ladwig said Lockheed Martin plans to ramp up the reuse effort to include some 600 components from Artemis 2 through Artemis 5, and by Artemis 6, engineers intend to reuse about 5,000 Orion components between missions.

The Lockheed Martin-built crew module and the European-made service module for Artemis 2 are undergoing preparations for launch at Kennedy. The crew module for Artemis 2 will have several major differences from Artemis 1, including cockpit displays and hand controllers for the astronauts, and a full environmental control and life support system, called ECLSS.

“From an Orion perspective, I would say that we are waiting for the avionics (from Artemis 1),” said Howard Hu, NASA’s Orion program manager at Johnson Space Center in Houston. “That’s not the only principal driver for the Artemis 2 schedule. We’ve got a lot of testing of new hardware. We’re putting in ECLSS and all the crew systems. So certainly a challenge, but we’re doing a lot of things very well because we’ve done it three times now with the crew module.”

After ground teams stack the Orion crew modules and service modules, the spacecraft will be filled with hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide propellants, then moved to the Vehicle Assembly Building for hoisting on top of the SLS moon rocket. The core stage for the Artemis 2 moon rocket is scheduled to arrive at Kennedy Space Center in the coming months from its Boeing factory in New Orleans.

Modifications to the SLS moon rocket’s mobile launch platform will also begin this spring at Kennedy Space Center, following inspections and repairs from minor damage caused by the Artemis 1 launch.

Quelle: SN

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Update: 4.02.2023

Artemis 1 moon rocket looks ready for astronaut missions, NASA says

The Space Launch System megarocket aced its debut flight and appears ready to take the next big step.

NASA's Artemis 1 mission launches toward the moon atop a Space Launch System rocket from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Nov. 16, 2022. (Image credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky)

After acing its first-ever mission, NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) megarocket appears ready to take the next big step — launching astronauts.

The debut SLS flight, on Nov. 16, kicked off NASA's 25-day-long Artemis 1mission, which sent an uncrewed Orion capsule to lunar orbit and back. It also made the SLS the most powerful rocket ever to launch successfully, a title it wrested from NASA's iconic Saturn V.

An initial assessment of SLS' Artemis 1 performance, which NASA released on Nov. 30, gave the rocket high marks, finding that it performed as expected in all areas. Mission team members have now had more time to crunch the numbers, and the reviews continue to be rave, suggesting that no big changes will be required ahead of the first crewed SLS launch.

"Building off the assessment conducted shortly after launch, the preliminary post-flight data indicates that all SLS systems performed exceptionally and that the designs are ready to support a crewed flight on Artemis 2," NASA officials wrote in an update on Jan. 27(opens in new tab). "The post-flight analysis team will continue reviewing data and conducting final reportings."

Artemis 2 will send NASA astronauts on a roughly 10-day mission around the moon in 2024, if all goes according to plan.

SLS team members analyzed a lot of data to arrive at their most recent conclusions, which, as the above statement makes clear, are not the final word on the rocket's performance and prospects.

For example, cameras on the ground, on the rocket and in the air collected about 31 terabytes of imagery data about the liftoff, NASA officials said — more than 1.5 times the information represented by the printed material in the U.S. Library of Congress.

"The numerous views of the Artemis 1 rocket, including the solid rocket booster separation and interim cryogenic propulsion stage (ICPS) separation, provided imagery data that helped us assess how SLS performed from liftoff through the ascent and separation events," Beth St. Peter, SLS imagery integration lead, said in the Jan. 27 update.

The ICPS, the upper stage of the SLS, is powered by a single RL-10 engine. The giant rocket's core stage features four RS-25 engines left over from the space shuttle era. Two solid rocket boosters were affixed to the core stage for the Artemis 1 mission, helping the SLS generate a whopping 8.8 million pounds of thrust at liftoff.

All of this hardware performed extremely well on Nov. 16, NASA officials said in the latest update. For example, RS-25 thrust levels were within 0.5% of the expected values, as was the ratio of fuel (liquid hydrogen) to oxidizer (liquid oxygen) in the engines.

In addition, the SLS core stage inserted the ICPS and Orion into an initial orbit that took the duo up to 972.1 miles (1,564.4 kilometers) from Earth and as close as 16 miles (25.7 km).

"The insert was just 2.9 miles [4.7 km] shy of the perfect bullseye target of 975 miles [1,569.1 km] by 16 miles and well within acceptable parameters," NASA officials wrote in the update.

Artemis 1 will be just the beginning for the SLS and Orion, if all goes according to plan. NASA is counting on the hardware to help establish a permanent human presence on and around the moon by the end of the 2020s, a key goal of the agency's Artemis program.

Artemis will rely on other elements as well. For instance, SpaceX's giant Starshipvehicle will be the program's first crewed lunar lander, and the Artemis architecture also includes a small moon-orbiting space station called Gateway.

If all goes well with Artemis 2, Artemis 3 will put astronauts down near the lunar south pole in 2025 or thereabouts.

Quelle: SC

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Update: 8.02.2023

NASA practices Artemis II splashdown recovery mission

TITUSVILLE, Fla. - The preparation for Artemis II is well underway. The second Artemis moon mission plans to bring astronauts back to the moon for the first time since 1972. This week, crews were training for the day those astronauts return to earth.

The training session happened in a basin of water near the Kennedy Space Center Vehicle Assembly Building. It was the recovery team's first session to recover people from the Orion Capsule in water.

The Department of Defense and NASA divers worked together in the training just as they had recovered the Artemis I Orion capsule. Although, this time the capsule had four people on board.

"It actually behaves just like the Artemis II," said Mark Vazquez, the NASA EGS Program Manager. "Being able to get on it, to be able to climb on top of it and see how much it bounces around in the water gives them more experience."

The practice mission starts with sending one person inside the capsule to see how the astronauts are doing.

"He will see the condition of the astronauts. Verify that they were OK. See if there are any issues or any medical concerns that they are having or need to be addressed," said Vazquez.

This time, one astronaut is unconscious. The crews work quickly to attach a floating collar around the capsule to prevent it from floating away. Then they hook up a large blowup pad that experts call the "front porch".

"We have different specialized equipment that we could use. If we had multiple people unconscious at the same time there’s also the possibility of bringing in the entire capsule into the well deck depending on the severity of the injuries," said TOSC Landing Recovery Flow Manager Ed Hardy.

The same mission will be done with the same crew members numerous times under a multitude of conditions. Each scenario builds the experience of the crews for the day Artemis II returns to earth.

"It’s amazing how well the operation has gone. The team has melded together," said Hardy. "This is mostly the same team that went out for Artemis I, so these guys have worked together in specialized activities for a period of time now."

Training will continue in the basin over the next few weeks. The next big test comes in July when they take the capsule to San Diego. There they will test their abilities in the open waters.

Quelle: FOX35

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Update: 11.03.2023

NASA to reveal Artemis 2 moon astronauts on April 3

Raumfahrt - Startvorbereitung für SLS rocket Artemis 2 mission -Update-1

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