“Houston, We are ready for take-off” is what we should have heard on August 29. Instead, we heard, “The Artemis 1 launch was scrubbed Monday after encountering an issue getting one of the four RS-25 engines on the bottom of the rocket’s core stage to the proper temperature range for liftoff,” from NASA’s press release on the matter. Artemis 1 will be the first spacecraft to enter the Moon’s orbit in nearly half a century. After countless delays, repairs, challenges, and more, NASA is planning to launch Artemis 1 on Tuesday, September 27, with a backup date of October 2.
The Artemis missions plan to eventually get humans back on the Moon in 2025 and set up a sustainable living environment for humans. The plan has three missions in total, ending with Artemis 3, which will send humans to the Moon. The goal for Artemis 1 consists of only an unmanned round trip to the Moon without landing on the surface. Artemis 1 is a test flight for Artemis 2, which will make contact with the Moon’s surface, then end with Artemis 3, which will have humans onboard and land on the Moon.
But what is the spacecraft? The spacecraft has two parts: the rocket and the space module. The rocket used for this mission is called the “Space Launch System.” This rocket is the most powerful in the world and is designed to be evolvable. The missile can be changed to suit future missions, which could be to Mars, Jupiter, or Saturn. The rocket has two big boosters and four engines, which are being reused for Artemis 1. The space module is called “Orion” and is made to accommodate 4 people for deep space travel. The future astronauts on Artemis 3 will live together on Orion, so it has to be evolvable and reusable for future missions. Orion is attached to the top of the SLS, which is how it will travel to space and back.
According to NASA, the launch is supposed to be “no earlier than 11:37 AM eastern time”. Space travel is an exact science, so everything matters. How heavy the payload is, wind speeds at that time, and how the Earth and other moons and planets orbit and rotate. Mars has a larger orbit around the sun than the Earth, so every 26 months, a small window of time when the Earth and Mars orbits end up parallel allows us to have a straightforward path to Mars. For now, we have to worry about the Moon’s orbit and revolutions aligning with the Earth’s, which happens once every 24 hours. This trip will be the farthest a vehicle designed for astronauts has ever traveled into outer space.
Initially, the Artemis 1 launch was going to be on August 29, but it got postponed to September 3. On the second go-round, they found a hydrogen leak in Orion, leading to the next launch date being delayed to the 27th. The spacecraft will launch from the Kennedy Space Center on a little island in Florida called Merritt Island.
Most of us remember reading “The Martian” by Andy Weir, which highlights all of the difficulties and setbacks that the main character and side characters go through to get this man home while he is stranded on Mars. This novel gives the reader some behind-the-scenes understanding of how NASA works and how much of a challenge calculating and detail goes into facing mankind’s final frontier.
The Artemis mission statement is “All that we build, all that we study, all that we do, prepare is to go,” and hopefully, on September 27, 2022, the launch is set and ready to go.