Circle August 29 In Your Calendar. That’s When NASA Now Wants To Launch Its New ‘Mega Moon Rocket’ Mission

Science Circle August 29 In Your Calendar. That’s When NASA Now Wants To Launch Its New ‘Mega Moon Rocket’ Mission Jamie Carter Senior Contributor Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. I inspire people to go stargazing, watch the Moon, enjoy the night sky New! Follow this author to improve your content experience.

Got it! Jul 20, 2022, 07:15pm EDT | New! Click on the conversation bubble to join the conversation Got it! Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin A full Moon is in view from Launch Complex 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on June 14, . . .

[+] 2022 with the Artemis I Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion spacecraft, atop the mobile launcher. The first in an increasingly complex series of missions, Artemis I will test SLS and Orion as an integrated system prior to crewed flights to the Moon. NASA NASA has just announced that its historic Artemis-1 mission—a trip far beyond the Moon to test its Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion space capsule—could launch in late August or early in September.

Artemis-1 is a critical precursor test flight to the crewed Artemis-3 mission that will land the first woman and the first person of color on the Moon in 2024 or 2025. The announcement was made on the 53rd anniversary of the historic landing of Apollo 11’s astronauts on the Moon. “We have placeholders on the range for August 29, September 2 and September 5,” said Jim Free, associate administrator, Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters in Washington, in a press briefing today.

“We will make the agency commitment at the flight readiness review, just a little over a week before launch, but these are the dates that the team is working to. ” Crucially, all three options allows Artemis-1 to be a “long class mission. Artemis-1 and SLS latest launch dates Here are the specifics of those three possible launch dates for SLS and Orion on the Artemis-1 mission: August 29, 2022: the launch window opens at 8:33 a.

m. EST for a two-hour window. The duration would be a 42-days and the targeted splashdown date would be October 10, 2022.

To met this date the targeted roll-out date would be August 18, 2022. September 2, 2022: the launch window opens at 12:48 p. m.

EST for a two-hour window. The duration would be 39-days with splashdown on October 11, 2022. September 5, 2022: the launch window opens at 5:12 p.

m. EST for a 1. 5-hours launch window for a 42-days mission, splashing-down on October 17, 2022.

MORE FOR YOU New Research Finds A Connection Between Domestic Violence And These Two Personality Disorders This Scientist Helps Andean Forests And Ecuador’s Women In STEM Exceptional Fossil Preservation Suggests That Discovering Dinosaur DNA May Not Be Impossible During Artemis I, Orion will venture thousands of miles beyond the moon during an approximately . . .

[+] three week mission. NASA What is Artemis-1? Delayed from 2021 and most recently planned for August, Artemis-1 is an un-crewed flight test mission during which NASA’s Orion spacecraft, European Service Model (ESM) and NASA’s as-yet-untested Space Launch System (SLS)—the most powerful rocket in the world—will fly beyond the Moon. Inside will be three mannequins to collect spaceflight data.

“Helga,” “Zohar” and “Moonikin Campos” will detect radiation levels and test various sensors during the Artemis I lunar mission. A full “wet” dress rehearsal to verify systems and practice countdown procedures for the first launch was first held in March, with the most recent in late June. During that dry-run NASA’s engineers got to T-29 seconds and executed 150 from 120 commands.

Preparations for the launch “Since arriving at the Vehicle Assembly Building back on July 2, our teams have been pressing ahead to prepare the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft for the Artemis-1 launch,” said Cliff Lanham, senior vehicle operations manager, Exploration Ground Systems Program, Kennedy, during the briefing. “That included repairing the source of a hydrogen leak that engineers identified during the last wet dress rehearsal. ” Why the launch timing is so precise The exact launch date has to be carefully calculated and depends on where the Moon is, the eclipses it causes in space that the solar-powered Orion will have to fly through, and timing the splash-down that ends the mission.

“We have a cut-out for eclipse from August 30 through September 1,” said Mike Sarafin, Artemis mission manager, NASA Headquarters, during the briefing. “That’s a three-day period where due to the Sun and Earth alignment while Orion is headed outbound on the trajectory it will be unable to produce power because the spacecraft would be in the shadow of the Earth. ” Planned missions of NASA’s Artemis program.

NASA What Artemis-1 will do During Artemis-1, SLS will launch, orbit the Earth, and then send Orion and the ESM to enter an elliptical orbit of the Moon that will see them get to within 62 miles above its surface and about 40,000 miles beyond it. Three weeks after the launch the Orion spacecraft will splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off San Diego. Testing Orion’s heat shield “Validating Orion’s heat shield is our primary objective—it’s a critical activity that we see is necessary before we fly crew on Orion on the very next mission [Artemis-2],” said Sarafin.

“When Orion returns from the Moon it will be traveling at about 24,500 miles an hour or Mach 32 and it will experience temperatures as hot as the Sun outside the heat shield. ” The heat shield has undergone extensive testing on the ground, but that’s much faster and much hotter than spacecraft experience when they return from low-Earth orbit. SLS Vs.

Saturn V About 12 years in development, NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket is 322 feet high and weighs 5. 75 million lbs. It will produce 8.

8 million lbs. of maximum thrust, which is 15 percent more thrust than the Saturn V rocket that took the Apollo missions to the Moon in the late 1960s and early 1970s. “Today’s anniversary is a good reminder of what a privilege it is to be a part of a mission like this,” said Sarafin.

“It’s not just the Artemis-1 mission—it’s the bigger picture of returning to the Moon and preparing to go to Mars, which we try not to lose sight of in our day-to-day work. ” “Launch day is going to be here before we know it!” Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes. Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn .

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