What went wrong with Artemis, I was on the launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center, so that’s where NASA decided to try to fix it.
On Tuesday, mission managers announced they would stop returning to the £5.75 million, 322-foot-tall Vehicle Assembly Building, the combination of the Space Launch System rocket, Orion capsule and mobile launcher.
Instead, they will remain at Launch Pad 39-B to work on the source of the Saturday scrub, which was the second rub of NASA’s effort to send the unmanned Artemis I on a multi-week mission to the moon. It is the first step in its ultimate plans to return humans, including the first woman, to the lunar surface for the first time since 1972.
The most recent issue on the $4.1 billion rocket was yet another leak of cryogenic liquid hydrogen in a fuel line that runs from the mobile launcher to the SLS core stage. Similar issues plagued wet dress rehearsals in April and June as well as the first launch attempt. NASA decided to replace the seal on the connector, called a quick disconnect, on the launch pad.
The decision is not straightforward as it requires setting up an enclosure around the work area to ensure that environmental conditions will not damage the material. If NASA had returned to the VAB, the same work would have been done, but in a more controlled work environment.
But NASA can’t test the fix on the VAB. It can only do cryogenic fuel loading on the pad, and since that was what ultimately thwarted the last launch attempt, NASA opted to fix the launch pad.
“Performing the work on the pad also allows teams to gather as much data as possible to understand the cause of the problem,” says an update on NASA’s website.
In addition, NASA teams will check for possible leaks in the other six main umbilicals running on the SLS. Before launch, the core stage must be filled with 537,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen and 196,000 gallons of liquid oxygen to help power the four RS-25 engines at the base of the core stage which together with two solid rocket boosters will deliver 8.8 million SLS kgs of thrust at takeoff. This would make SLS the most powerful rocket ever to lift off from Earth.
The rub forced NASA to miss that window for a launch, which ended Tuesday. The next window runs from Sept. 19 to Oct. 4, but there are a few obstacles to creating that window.
The largest is a current agreement NASA has with Space Launch Delta 45, which runs the Eastern Range, which gave Artemis I only a 25-day window before the batteries in the self-destruct mechanism called the flight termination system must be tested. They can only be checked and potentially recharged at the VAB.
This limitation would force NASA to backtrack, which would take several weeks to return to the pad. NASA may want to do this anyway after the launch pad is repaired to “perform additional work that does not require use of the cryogenic facilities available only on the pad,” according to the NASA release.
A second issue is the upcoming Crew-5 mission scheduled to send four passengers to the International Space Station aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon atop a Falcon 9 rocket for launch from nearby Launch Pad 39-A. NASA officials said they would not attempt any launch that would delay the Crew-5 mission, which is scheduled to fly no earlier than Oct. 3.
Managers did discuss the possibility of seeking permission from the Eastern Range to stay on base beyond the current 25-day limit, and if work on the launch pad can be completed quickly, there could still be a chance to aim for a launch at the front end of the September window.
“Let’s remember that we’re not going to launch until it’s right,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said at a press conference after the scrub on Saturday. “This is standard operating procedure and will continue to apply.”
That could mean waiting until the operating windows of October 17-31, November 12-27 and December 9-23. Each window has only certain days when the Earth and Moon are in the right position for the mission.
A reset, however, can also be a challenge, said NASA SLS program manager John Honeycutt.
“The big thing we want to avoid is repeats in the VAB,” he said last week before the scrub. “Those are the things that (SLS chief engineer John Blevins) told me put more stress on the vehicle than anything else.”
Honeycutt, however, said the possibility of a rollback is not out of the question.
“We still have rolls on the vehicle, but we want to take care of it and manage it,” he said.
He also said there are plenty of opportunities left to load and unload cryogenic fuel into the tank, which it has now endured several times with the two launch attempts. several wet dress rehearsals earlier this year as well as hot fire trials in 2021.
“I know we’re in the double digits for additional tank cycles,” he said. “As far as things with the rocket sitting on the pad, there’s probably more little things like seeing cracks, cracks in the (thermal protection system foam) that we need to analyze to clean up.”
The first launch rub on August 29 came after a smaller liquid hydrogen leak in a different line that took several hours to complete, and then a malfunctioning sensor that misinterpreted engine temperatures.
NASA’s Jim Free, associate administrator for the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, said the second attempt was not taken seriously, and managers were confident they wouldn’t run into the same problems. In the end the scrub was the right call, reminding people that this is a test flight.
“We talked about this mission being dangerous,” he said. “But we’ll take the risks that are reasonable, the risk that we know they’ve already pushed the vehicle and the system as far as possible when we launch, and we’ll be ready to go at that time.”
NASA’s Artemis I moon rocket returns to Kennedy Space Center launch pad
2022 Orlando Sentinel Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Reference: What’s next for Artemis I after the 2nd scrub? (2022, September 7) retrieved September 7, 2022 by
This document is subject to copyright. Except for any fair dealing for purposes of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without written permission. Content is provided for informational purposes only.
