After many years of waiting and billions of budgets, NASA's Moon Rocket will finally be tested next week. 50 years after NASA's famous Apollo mission, the 322-foot (98-meter) rocket will attempt to send an empty crew capsule into the Moon's orbit. If all goes well, astronauts could make one orbit around the Moon by 2024.
NASA aims to land two people on the surface of the Moon by the end of 2025. Liftoff is set for Monday morning from NASA's Kennedy Space Center. NASA officials have warned that the six-week test flight is risky and could be cut short if something fails.
The retired founder of George Washington University's Space Policy Institute said a lot is going on on this trial run. He said that if things go south, the rising cost and long gaps between missions will make a return difficult.
rocket power
The new rocket is smaller and thinner than the Saturn V rocket that carried 24 Apollo astronauts to the Moon half a century ago but is more powerful (8.8 million pounds, or 4 million kilograms).
According to Nelson, it is called the Space Launch System Rocket (LSS for short).
Unlike the streamlined Saturn V, the new rocket features a pair of strap-on boosters renewed from NASA's Space Shuttle.
The boosters would peel off after two minutes, as the shuttle boosters did, but would not be ejected from the Atlantic for reuse.
The main stage would continue firing before breaking apart and crashing into pieces in the Pacific.
Two hours after liftoff, an upper-stage capsule will send Orion running toward the Moon.
moonship
NASA's high-tech, automated Orion capsule is named after the constellation, the brightest one in the night sky. At 11 feet (3 m) tall, it is more spacious than Apollo's capsule, which seats four astronauts instead of three. Unlike the rocket, Orion was already launched in 2014 to make two orbits around the Earth. This time the service module of the European Space Agency will be attached for propulsion and solar power through four wings.
flight plan
Orion's flight is scheduled to last six weeks from Florida liftoff to Pacific splashdown.
It will take about a week to reach the Moon, 240,000 miles (386,000 km) away.
After moving closely around the Moon, the capsule will enter a distant orbit with a distant point of 38,000 miles (61,000 kilometers).
This would put Orion 280,000 miles (450,000 kilometers) away from Earth, far away from Apollo.
The big test comes at the end of the mission, as Orion hits the atmosphere at 25,000 mph (40,000 kph) on its way to a splashdown in the Pacific.
The heat shield uses the same material as the Apollo capsules to withstand reentry temperatures of 5,000 °F (2,750 °C). But the advanced design qualifies for fast, hot returns.
HITCHHIKERS
In addition to three test dummies, there are several stowaways in flight for deep space research. Once Orion is headed toward the Moon, the ten shoebox-sized satellites will take off. The problem is that these so-called CubeSats were installed on the rocket a year ago, and the batteries in half of them could not be recharged because the launch was delayed. NASA expects some to fail given the low-cost, high-risk nature of these mini-satellites.
CubeSats measuring radiation should be fine. In a back-to-the-future salute, Orion will take some pieces of moon rocks collected by Apollo 11's Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in 1969, and a bolt from one of their rocket engines, salvaged from the ocean a decade earlier Will go According to NASA, Aldrin is not attending the launch, but three of his former colleagues will be there: Walter Cunningham of Apollo 7, Tom Stafford of Apollo 10 and Harrison Schmidt of Apollo 17.
APOLLO VS. ARTEMIS
More than 50 years later, Apollo still stands as NASA's greatest achievement.
Using technology from the 1960s, it took just eight years for NASA to launch its first astronaut, Alan Shepard, and land Armstrong and Aldrin on the Moon.
In contrast, Artemis has already dragged on for more than a decade, despite building on the short-lived moon exploration program Constellation.
Twelve Apollo astronauts walked on the Moon from 1969 to 1972, lasting no more than three days at a time.
For Artemis, NASA will be drawing from a diverse astronaut pool currently numbering 42 and is expanding the time spent on the Moon to at least a week.
The goal is to create a long-term lunar presence that will smother the skids to send people to Mars. NASA's Nelson promises to announce the first Artemis moon crew after Orion returns to Earth.
What's next (WHAT'S NEXT)
Much remains to be done before astronauts can step on the Moon again. Orion doesn't come with its lunar lander like the Apollo spacecraft, so NASA has hired Elon Musk's SpaceX to provide its Starship spacecraft for the first Artemis moon landing. Two other private companies are developing moonwalking suits. So far, the starship has only covered a distance of six miles (10 kilometers).
Musk wants to launch the Starship around Earth on SpaceX's Super Heavy booster before attempting to land on the Moon without a crew. One hitch is that the starship would need to be refueled in an Earth-orbiting fuel depot before going to the Moon.
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