By: Sophia Yingxuan Wang
NASA plans to launch its SLS moon rocket Artemis as soon as late August. This announcement comes after an almost successful fueling and countdown test conducted on June 20th. The only problem during this test was a hydrogen leak, which will be repaired. The rocket would then be brought back to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for the first launch attempt.
The test conducted on June 20th, was called a “wet dress rehearsal” due to the flowing of fuel in the propellant tanks. The test was designed to help NASA work out glitches and procedures without actually launching the rocket. For the first time ever, the rocket’s propellants were fully filled with 196,000 gallons of liquid oxygen and 537,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen.
When the hydrogen leak was discovered, engineers were able to work out a plan where closing a valve could stop the leak. The launch director, Charlie Blackwell-Thompson approved the plans, and the countdown continued until there was 29 seconds left before the launch.
NASA officials said that they needed to analyze the data from the test before they feel that the rocket is ready for launching, but they are excited about the progress from previous tests. Thomas Whitemeyer, NASA’s deputy associate administrator for common exploration systems development said “We’re looking at the pieces of the puzzle to decide what are the pieces that we didn’t get, but we also got an awful lot of pieces to the puzzle put together, and we have a pretty good idea of what the puzzle looks like at this point.” He believes that counting down close to zero with full propellant tanks was a major milestone.
NASA will not perform another “wet dress rehearsal”, as they said that they had enough data to launch the huge SLS moon rocket. In a statement, the agency said “NASA has reviewed the data from the rehearsal and determined the testing campaign is complete. NASA will set a specific target launch date after replacing hardware associated with the leak.” The initial launch window would be between August 23 and September 6.
NASA plans to return to the Moon because the Moon will be used to test technologies and resources that will take humans to beyond Mars. NASA has implemented the President’s Space Policy Directive-1 to “lead an innovative and sustainable program of exploration with commercial and international partners to enable human expansion across the solar system.”
The first launch, which is known as Artemis I, would launch the Orion capsule into orbit around the moon without any astronauts on board. In 2024, four astronauts would be launched in the Orion capsule around the moon, but not land on the moon. Depending on the success of the previous two missions, and availability of vehicles, the first lunar landing since 1972 could happen.
Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/21/science/nasa-artemis-moon-rocket.html