The US space agency NASA begins this Thursday the dress rehearsal for the launch of the first mission of the Artemis program, which aims to prepare the return of US astronauts to the Moon with a view to a future colonization of that Earth satellite.
For this test, NASA will move the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, with the Orion spacecraft at the tip, from the assembly center to Launch Pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center, more than 350 kilometers to the north. of Miami.
Starting at 5:00 p.m. local time (10:00 p.m. GMT) this Thursday, a “caterpillarized” transport vehicle with the huge rocket and the ship on top will travel the 4.2 miles (6.7 kilometers) along a boulder road. ) that separate the hangar from the platform at a speed of one mile (1.6 km) per hour.
A huge and powerful rocket
Together, the SLS and Orion measure 322 feet (101.2 meters), more than the Statue of Liberty, and weigh 5.75 million pounds (more than 2.6 tons), making them difficult to move.
Both were assembled at the Kennedy Space Center in a complex process that ended on October 21.
It is estimated that in about six hours the “caterpillar” will have reached its destination and then the test itself will begin, consisting of loading the rocket’s tanks and carrying out a launch countdown.
The whole process can take about twelve hours.
Once completed, the rocket and capsule will be taken back to the assembly building for final testing before Artemis I’s historic launch.
The central part of the SLS rocket, 212 feet (64.6 meters) high and with a diameter of 27.6 feet (8.4 meters), was built by Boeing, a company that also created the rocket’s control system during the flight.
In that main part, 730,000 gallons (2.7 million liters) of supercooled liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen are stored, which feed the four RS-25 engines with which the rocket is equipped.
According to a NASA document, SLS is strong enough to help the Orion spacecraft reach the speed of 24,500 miles per hour (39,400 kilometers per hour) needed to reach the Moon.
Orion was built by Lockheed Martin to take astronauts “further than ever before” and bring them back to Earth safely.
The Artemis program
The unmanned Artemis I mission will be the first integrated flight test of the Artemis deep space exploration systems and will open the door to a series of increasingly complex missions, of which the third, not before 2025, will be in which astronauts set foot on the Moon.
The last mission in which NASA astronauts set foot on the Moon was Apollo 17, which took place between December 7 and 19, 1972 and broke several records, including the longest moon landing and the largest number of samples moons brought to Earth.
The official launch date for Artemis I will be set after today’s fuel run dress rehearsal.
In this first mission, the Orion spacecraft will reach an orbit of 40,000 miles (more than 64,300 km) beyond the Moon, which means that it will be 280,000 miles (more than 450,000 km) from Earth.
The Artemis II mission, scheduled for May 2024, will carry astronauts on a flight to orbit the Moon and Artemis III is the one that will carry astronauts, including a woman and a person of color, to the Moon, according to the commitment from NASA.
The goal of the Artemis program is to provide a foundation for deep space exploration with humans and help establish a long-term presence on the Moon and beyond, according to space agency releases.
Last November, NASA administrator Bill Nelson announced that the manned return to the Moon, initially planned for 2024, had been delayed until 2025 due to technical and legal problems and the covid-19 pandemic.
The Chinese are being very “aggressive” in space, but “we want to be the first to return to the Moon after more than half a century,” Nelson said at the time.
Regarding trips to Mars, he said that “it is one thing to go 240,000 miles (to the Moon) and back, and another is to travel millions and millions of miles. “There is a lot to learn on the Moon to go to Mars,” she said. (I)
Source: Eluniverso
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