Tag: Artemis

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Cislunar activity is about to explode

Greg Autry is writing a series of articles for Forbes on the coming era of cislunar activity. Here’s the first.

From the article:
“Walking the floor of the International Astronautical Conference in Paris last fall, I couldn’t help but feel that the Moon will soon be a very busy and very international destination. 2019 saw a lunar landing attempt by a private Israeli team and Japan’s ispace tried it last month. Both nations promise to return to the Moon soon. Meanwhile, China’s governmental program has had a series of lunar successes including placing a lander and rover on far side of the Moon. There will be landers, rovers, hoppers, and human habitats scattered across the lunar surface by the end of the decade. This activity will require a lot of orbital infrastructure.”

Particularly interesting is the discussion of the Moon’s gravitational anomalies due to its uneven density. This makes most low lunar orbits (LLO) unstable.

Lunar Orbital Congestion Is Gonna Be A Thing
Lunar Orbital Congestion Is Gonna Be A Thing

The lunar orbital environment is pristine today, but physics and economics suggest that the space above the Moon may be congested by 2030.
Forbes Forbes
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Artemis I, take two

NASA will take another stab at getting Artemis one off the pad this Saturday.

From the article: “It was not immediately clear from Tuesday’s news conference what the implications of launching with a warmer-than-normal main engine would be. From a physics standpoint, igniting super-chilled propellants in a warmer-than-anticipated engine would likely severely damage the RS-25 engine’s turbopump, at a minimum. Presumably, therefore, NASA would not launch the SLS rocket without high confidence in its flight rationale.”

So, we’ll see…


A faulty sensor may have scrubbed the launch of NASA’s massive SLS rocket

A faulty sensor may have scrubbed the launch of NASA’s massive SLS rocket

“The way the sensor is behaving does not line up with the physics of the situation.”

Ars Technica Ars Technica
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More on SLS

Here’s an interesting interview with Lori Garver, Deputy Administrator of NASA during early SLS development.
 
From the interview:
“I think a test flight is just that, it’s a test flight. This happy talk of it being completed—just look at the language, the celebration, NASA’s planning, and so forth for the launch. There is not another test flight planned if this doesn’t go perfectly. So then what? You’re going to put people on one in two years if the first one didn’t go well? I just have never heard anyone talk about that plan.”
 
This is exactly what I’ve been wondering about. SpaceX moves forward by crashing lots of rockets. I know NASA works differently, but surely you have to plan for failure in your test schedule.
 
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Artemis 1

NASA’s SLS rocket will launch for the first time this Monday (8/29). Here’s a brief history of SLS and why it elicits strong opinions in the space community.
 
From the article:
“Those who have focused on the “space race” this year between SLS and Starship have missed the point. The real question is not which of the two super heavy-lift rockets launches first. Rather, it’s “how many Starships will launch between the first and second flights of the SLS rocket?””
 
Opinions aside, we can all agree that a launch of the most powerful rocket since the Saturn V is a big deal.