Artemis Stuff

[Yazata]

The Artemis I vehicle is fully assembled in the Vertical Assembly Building at Cape Canaveral. This particular SLS (the first one built) is slated to hurl an uncrewed Orion capsule around the Moon and back early next year. Then Artemis II will fly crew on the same path around the Moon. Then apparently Artemis III will go for a lunar landing, assuming that the Human Landing System is available by then. The SLS is so expensive that they will only be able to fly them at a cadence of about one a year. So Artemis I in 2022, Artemis II in 2023, and (ideally) Artemis III in 2024. (Everyone expects the human landing to slide.)

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[C C]

[...] The SLS is so expensive that they will only be able to fly them at a cadence of about one a year. So Artemis I in 2022, Artemis II in 2023, and (ideally) Artemis III in 2024. (Everyone expects the human landing to slide.)

https://pbs.twimg.com/card_img/145881178...name=small

Yep, they moved the latter two up one year respectively. Bezos truly did do his part to assist any Beijing space-race, manned lunar goals.

https://www.techtimes.com/articles/26777...rliest.htm

excerpts: . . . NASA Administrator Bill Nelson has said that targeting 2024 to bring astronauts back to the moon is not really feasible.

The delays brought about by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic as well as the lawsuit filed by Blue Origin against NASA have contributed to the change in the moon landing goal.

The Artemis program's first test flight, Artemis 1, is still scheduled to launch next February. However, the launch of the second test flight, Artemis 2, has been delayed from 2023 to 2024.

[...] NASA has decided to move the moon landing goal of the Artemis program from 2024 to 2025 at the earliest.

[Yazata]

Here's an excellent Artemis infographic by Tony Bela

It shows the latest SuperHeavy booster configuration and the recently announced lengthened 'Depot' Starship variant that will remain in orbit as it receives fuel and oxidizer from the tanker variants. The HLS (and other deep space variants) will dock with it and get refueled in Earth orbit. An orbital gas station!

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[Yazata]

Artemis 1 is scheduled to launch on SLS's first flight for an uncrewed trip around the Moon on Monday August 29 at 5:33 AM PDT, 8:33 AM EDT, 12:33 UTC. It should be a sight to see, and I'm definitely getting up for that one.

SLS has a takeoff thrust of 39,440 Kn (kilonewtons), while Saturn V had 35,100 Kn, thus making SLS the most powerful rocket ever to achieve orbit (if it succeeds).

(But not the most powerful rocket ever to lift off from Earth. The Soviet N-1 Moon rocket had 45,400 Kn, but never succeeded in reaching orbit. They all blew up and the program was cancelled.)

... of course there's that Big Shiny Rocket coming (someday), that the FAA is currently slow-walking for a launch license, which should have 72,000 Kn.

But SLS will hold the record for a while... It still should be very cool to see a rocket that big take off.

https://nextspaceflight.com/launches/details/115

Here's a graphic that was shown at one of the Artemis press briefings, that shows the various parts of the Gateway lunar orbital space station and who is manufacturing what.

It looks like they will be leaning on Falcon Heavy to launch the various bits. The SpaceX "logistics module" is the previously announced Dragon XL supply capsule, which apparently will remain attached to Gateway for long periods and serve as another module, periodically swapped out for new ones arriving from Earth full of stuff. The smaller HTV-XG is another smaller supply capsule, to be designed and manufactured in Japan by JAXA.

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