Suspended under parachutes, a space capsule without astronauts cast a gentle streak of light in the Pacific Ocean on Sunday, concluding NASA’s Artemis I lunar mission.
The end of the unmanned test flight coincided with the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 17 moon landing, the last time NASA astronauts set foot there.
The Artemis program is the successor to Apollo, and after years of delays and soaring prices, the new rockets and spacecraft that will send astronauts back to the moon have worked as smoothly as their managers. mission logic can expect.
“A new day has begun, and the Artemis generation is taking us there,” Bill Nelson, NASA administrator, said on NASA Television after the collision.
The trip to the moon marked a spectacularly successful year for NASA. Its James Webb Space Telescope, launched nearly a year ago, began sending back spectacular images of the universe this summer. Its DART mission showed in September that deliberately hitting an asteroid could protect Earth in the future if a deadly space rock is discovered during a collision with their planet. ta.
With the ending of Artemis I, much attention will turn to SpaceX, the private rocket company founded by Elon Musk. NASA is relying on a version of Starship, the company’s next-generation spacecraft that hasn’t yet flown into space, to land astronauts on the moon.
On Sunday, shortly after noon Eastern time, the Orion crew capsule – where astronauts will sit during future flights – re-entered Earth’s atmosphere at 24,500 miles a hours. This is the ultimate goal of the mission: to demonstrate that the capsule’s heat shield can withstand temperatures of up to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
By design, the capsule bounces off the upper air layer before returning a second time. This is the first time that a capsule designed for astronauts has performed this maneuver, known as a jump, allowing for a more precise piloting of the landing site. As expected, there were two loss of communication due to the heat from the impact with the atmosphere creating charged gases around the capsule that blocked the radio signal.
Before and after the power outage, live video from outside Orion’s window shows dramatic views of the Earth getting bigger and bigger.
At 12:40 p.m. Eastern time, the capsule settled in the Pacific Ocean off Mexico’s Baja peninsula. Rescue teams aboard the USS Portland encountered strong winds and rough seas with waves 4 to 5 feet high.
Over the next few hours, rescue teams are working to pull Orion out of the water. It will return to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for inspection.
The capsule and the Space Launch System, a giant new rocket, are key parts of Artemis, which aims to land astronauts on the moon near its south pole as early as 2025.
“If you asked me to grade it, I would give it an A+,” Catherine Koerner, deputy administrator for probe systems development at NASA, said on NASA Television as Orion approached Earth. on Sunday morning. “We are learning how to operate the spacecraft and we are learning how to control this amazing machine.”
During Artemis I’s 26 days, problems appeared as expected, but the flight did not appear to have major problems that required investigation and redesign over the long term.
“It’s a great demonstration that this tool works,” said Daniel L. Dumbacher, executive director of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Mr. Dumbacher oversaw early work on the Space Launch System over a decade ago when he was the top official for human spaceflight at NASA.
Although the mission was years behind schedule and over budget by billions of dollars, the flight provided some validation of the traditional government-run approach that NASA has taken to developing complex spatial hardware development.
“In my view, it certainly lives up to expectations, if not more,” directed Jeff Bingham, a former senior Republican aide on the Senate subcommittee that formed the law in 2010. NASA builds the Space Launch System. “I feel good about the fact that what we intended is becoming a reality.”
Even Lori Garver, a former NASA associate director who advocates turning to private companies to come up with more innovative rocket designs that can be built faster and cheaper, admits that the trip Artemis I’s flight went smoothly.
“It’s great that it’s working,” she said. “It’s been a huge relief and excitement at NASA.”
The space agency now appears to be in good shape to launch its next mission, Artemis II, scheduled for 2024. That flight will send four astronauts to the moon without landing, then orbit back to Earth.
The moon landing is planned for the third Artemis mission, in which the Orion and Space Launch System will send four astronauts into a large circular orbit around the moon. That quest would not require abilities beyond those demonstrated in Artemis I and Artemis II.
Hardware production for those tasks is well underway. The Orion capsule for Artemis II has mostly been built at the Kennedy Space Center. The service module for Orion, built by Airbus as part of the European Space Agency’s contribution to lunar missions, was delivered last year. This weekend, the bottom section for the rocket will launch Artemis III went to Kennedy to install.
But Artemis III will hinge on the third essential piece of the puzzle: a lander built by SpaceX. And in that part of the mission, Mr. Musk’s company will have to create a series of technological feats that have never been achieved before.
“I think all eyes are going to start to turn,” said Ms. Garver, whose work under the Obama administration helped lay the groundwork for SpaceX’s current program to send astronauts to the International Space Station. Lander.
NASA has awarded SpaceX a $2.9 billion contract in 2021 to develop and build the lunar lander, a variant of the giant Starship rocket, for Artemis III.
A long-promised test launch of Starship into orbit has yet to take place, though brisk activity at the company’s development site in South Texas suggests that SpaceX is getting closer.
For Artemis III, the lander will dock with the Orion spacecraft above the moon.
The two astronauts will move to the lander and head to the south pole of the moon, spending almost a week on the surface.
But getting the lander to orbit the moon won’t be easy.
For one, it will require at least three different Spaceships. The Starship system is a two-stage rocket: a reusable booster called the Super Heavy with the Starship spacecraft on top. Once in orbit, the tanks of the second stage – the Starship spacecraft – will be nearly empty, without enough propellant to reach the moon.
So, first, SpaceX will launch a Starship that will essentially act as a gas station in orbit. It will then conduct a series of launches — Mr. Musk said no more than eight will be needed — the tanker version of Starship to carry propellant to the Starship gas station.
The final launch is the Starship lunar lander, which will arrive at the Starship gas station in orbit and refill its tank. The lunar lander will finally be ready to go to the moon.
While NASA’s Space Launch System rocket flew only once and all the pieces fell into the ocean like garbage, SpaceX’s Spacecraft is designed to be fully reusable. That would make launches more frequent and cheaper, Mr. Musk said.
Before Artemis III, SpaceX will first conduct an untested test to demonstrate that it can indeed perform rapid succession of Starship launches, reliably delivering the propellers into orbit. and landed safely on the moon.
The idea of refueling in space dates back decades but remains largely untested.
“Knowing what I think I know about the state of our research for microgravity propellant delivery, we have a long way to go,” said Mr. Dumbacher.
Rocket launches are still risky, too, so the numerous Starship launches required for Artemis III increase the chances of one of them failing, ruining the entire effort.
By transferring the development of the lunar lander to SpaceX, NASA hopes that Mr. Musk’s company’s innovative approach will deliver the lander faster and at a lower cost than the NASA-led program. .
The flip side is that if SpaceX finds the technical challenges harder than expected, NASA won’t have an immediate alternative to turn to. The agency has just received proposals from other companies for a second lander design, but the second lander design is reserved for a later lunar mission. (In November, NASA awarded SpaceX an additional $1.15 billion to deliver the Artemis IV lander.)
Mr Musk has also added to his portfolio of companies with the purchase of Twitter, where the turmoil following his takeover of the social media company is now consuming much of his time and attention. .
“It’s something new,” said Miss Garver. “Elon’s concerns have escalated,” though she said she’s not sure how those directly affect work at SpaceX.
CNBC reported last month that SpaceX has changed the leadership of Texas Starship operations with Gwynne Shotwell, president of SpaceX, and Mark Juncosa, the company’s vice president of vehicle engineering, currently overseeing the site.
Last week, Mr. Musk said on Twitter that he continues to oversee both SpaceX and Tesla, his electric car company, “but the teams there are so good that I usually don’t need much.”
Mr Bingham said he hoped Starship would be a success, but “There’s a lot of uncertainty there and that’s worrying.”
If SpaceX really succeeds with Starship, NASA will largely fund the development of spacecraft capable of sending astronauts to Mars at a bargain price for a lunar lander.
