The age of Artemis seems to be near. After 12 years of anticipation, two aborted flights and two hurricanes, NASA’s 98-meter-tall SLS rocket is finally ready for liftoff. You can watch the launch live here.
This might finally be the most awaited moment. Staying up for a launch that might happen an hour following midnight shouldn’t pose a problem for me, given my ample supply of candy, popcorn, and Nespresso pods. It also doesn’t hurt that he’s waited over a decade for this release, so this unusually late night will be a small price to pay. That’s assuming NASA can finally light this giant candle.
Also, there is a lot at stake. Artemis 1 is a demonstration mission in which SLS will attempt to send an uncrewed Orion capsule on a 25-day mission to the Moon and back. A successful mission would pave the way for Artemis 2, in which a crew of astronauts would attempt a similar journey. Jim Free, NASA’s director of exploration systems, told reporters on November 11 that “we will never get to Artemis 2 if Artemis 1 doesn’t succeed.”
Liftoff is scheduled for 1:04 am ET on Wednesday, November 16, with the launch window ending two hours later. NASA coverage is scheduled today at 10:30 p.m. and will be available at NASA TV, NASA’s YouTube channel, and on the live stream below. Commentaries for Spanish speakers are available hereand a detailed breakdown of the NASA TV show can be accessed here. Cryogenic supply coverage begins today at 3:30 p.m. on the same channels. (Fueling can have its own problems – it was when things went wrong during previous launch attempts.)
Weather conditions are expected to be 90% favorable for the SLS launch, but if NASA has to abort, launch opportunities are available on November 19 and 25. Let’s cross our fingers that they are not necessary.
Taking off with 8.8 million pounds of thrust, the SLS will become the most powerful and most powerful working rocket ever built. The launch itself promises to be exciting, but there are several key stages to monitor in the minutes and hours following liftoff.
The SLS’s two solid rocket boosters will say goodbye to the rocket regarding 126 seconds following launch, while the core stage will do the same around the 10-minute mark, at which point the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS) will pick up. the witness. Orion’s solar array will deploy 20 minutes following launch. A pair of course corrections, a perigee elevation maneuver, and a translunar injection burn are scheduled to occur at the 52-minute and 89-minute marks, respectively. The Orion will separate from the ICPS shortly before the mission reaches the two-hour mark, following which the uncrewed capsule will be on its own. The journey from Orion to the Moon will take regarding four days.
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Yesterday, the Artemis 1 mission management team gave his “yes” to proceed with the launch following discussing some last minute issues including the condition of a newly installed connector on the hydrogen tail service mast umbilical and some minor damage from Hurricane Nicole. The storm ripped through the region last week, forcing NASA to reschedule the launch of the SLS from November 14 to 16. Ready for action, the launch team began the 47 hour and 10 minute countdown at 1:54 am ET on Monday.
At NASA chose for leaving the SLS on Launch Pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida as the tropical storm approached. The rocket is designed to withstand winds reaching 85 miles per hour (137 kilometers per hour), but the gusts were stronger than expectedwith maximum recorded winds reaching 100 mph (160 km/h).
These winds caused some minor damage to the rocket, as NASA officials explained at a press conference held last night. Nicole’s winds caused regarding 10 feet of RTV, a sealant, to come loose in a seam between Orion’s launch abort system and the crew module adapter. RTV, or “room temperature vulcanizer,” fills the gap between the two elements. Or at least it did.
This type of repair It can only occur when the SLS is parked inside the nearby Vehicle Assembly Building, but NASA, following reviewing the damage, concluded that it was not severe enough to warrant repairs or launch delay. Mike Sarafin, manager of the Artemis 1 mission, said the risk posed by the delamination of RTV was “limited” and that no one who attended the mission management team meeting expressed dissenting views.
“We recognize that there is a non-zero possibility that we might lose additional RTV in flight and there is a possibility that it might affect a different area of the vehicleSarafin admitted. If more RTV were to become dislodged during the flight, it would probably break into small pieces and hit the adapter. of stage of the launch vehicle, or possibly the inner areas of the side boosters, he added. Regardless, the team concluded that the level of risk is acceptable.
I certainly hope they are right, as I remember the Columbia disaster of 2003, in which a piece of insulating foam that fell struck and damaged the shuttle’s left wing. The small piece of foam, which was moving at high speed, tore a hole in a heat protection tile which ultimately resulted in the destruction of the vehicle during its flight. re-entry to the atmosphere. The situation with SLS is very different, or at least that’s what we’re told.
The team plans to meet once more today at 2:30 p.m. ET.. If the meeting goes well, the ground crews will begin the process of loading the 750.000 gallons of supercold liquid oxygen and propellant hydrogen in the rocket tanks as of 3:30 pm ET. During yesterday’s briefing, Jeremy Parsons, deputy with NASA’s Earth System Exploration Program, said the ground team will use a “slower and gentler” charging procedure than was used during the first two launch attempts.. This slower, temperate approach to the tank proved successful during a Test cryogenic held on September 27.
In fact, NASA must beat the gremlin that is liquid hydrogen, a propellant that caused major headaches and delays during the shuttle era. ground crews have had a lot of time and practice to figure out the best way to load the leaking material into the SLS, so hopefully that won’t be a problem on Wednesday.