Moon mission canceled – Nasa gives new details

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Created: 8/30/2022 4:46 am

Of: Tobias Utz, Tanya Banner

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The start of the NASA mission “Artemis I” to the moon was surprisingly canceled: details at a glance.

+++ 4.15 p.m.: The US space agency Nasa has canceled the launch of an unmanned moon mission for Monday. “The launch of Artemis I will no longer take place today. Teams are working on an engine leak issue,” NASA said Monday, minutes into the two-hour launch window. “We won’t start until everything is right,” said Nasa boss Bill Nelson shortly afterwards. “This is a very complicated system and everything has to be right.” His own “Space Shuttle” mission has also been postponed four times.

The “Space Launch System” rocket and the “Orion” spacecraft capsule are still in a safe and stable condition, said NASA. Launch controllers are now investigating why an engine did not reach the required temperature before launch. The resulting delay meant that it was no longer possible to take off within the time window determined by gravity and the necessary acceleration.

In July, NASA had named September 2nd and September 5th as other possible start dates. However, it is still unclear whether the problems that have arisen can be resolved by then. “This is a shift, but it will definitely continue,” said German astronaut Matthias Maurer in a special broadcast on Phoenix.

The unmanned test flight “Artemis I”, which will last around 40 days, is intended to herald the return to manned flights to the moon. NASA wants to send people there again with its “Artemis II” mission at the earliest in 2025, including a woman and a non-white person for the first time. Problems had already arisen with earlier tests and the original schedule had been delayed.
“Every detail has to work,” Maurer continued. “Certain reserves and redundancies have been built in and provided for, but of course you don’t want to gamble them away before the start.” Astronaut Alexander Gerst added with a view to “Artemis I”: “This is the last test. The next one should have people flying with it. And of course you don’t want to take any risks.”

Nasa mission to the moon cancelled: Next possible start time of “Artemis I” has been set

+++ 3 p.m.: The next possible start time for the “Artemis I” mission is Friday, September 2nd. NASA has not yet commented on this.

+++ 2.40 p.m.: The start of the moon mission “Artemis I” has just been canceled. NASA just announced that the launch leader “cancelled the launch for today.” An engine leak that “couldn’t be fixed” is the cause, according to Nasa. More to come.

+++ 2.30 p.m.: The countdown clock continues to stand still. NASA is apparently still working on “troubleshooting”, as the engineers say. One of the rocket’s four engines can take a report from the BBC not cool enough. Now it is probably up to the flight controller’s assessment, who wants to look at the data. Even if the engine problem is fixed, it’s unclear whether the team can catch up – and launch the rocket in time.

Update from Monday, August 29, 1:15 p.m.: Apparently there are technical problems before the start of the NASA mission “Artemis I” to the moon. That reports the BBC on Monday afternoon with reference to a crack in one of the rocket’s intermediate tanks. NASA confirmed repair work on the rocket on Twitter: “Engineers are working through it,” says a statement.

The start of the “Artemis I” mission is scheduled for 2:30 p.m. German time. The specialists therefore have a two-hour time window for the repair work.

First report from Monday, August 29, 9 a.m.: Cape Canaveral – It should be nothing less than the beginning of a new era in the space travel: The new NASAThe Space Launch System (SLS) rocket is scheduled to take off for the first time on Monday (August 29), carrying a space capsule (officially named “Orion”) towards moon catapult. It’s the Start of the new NASA moon program “Artemis”which begins almost 50 years after the last humans left the moon.

As this is a technology test – the first launch of the giant rocket – there are no people on board. On this flight, two dolls will sit in the seats, which will be occupied by a flesh-and-blood crew in the coming years. The radiation measuring dummies “Helga” and “Zohar” come from the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and are intended to measure how radiation exposure far away from Earth affects the female organism. The DLR experiment is called “MARE” – it is the largest radiation experiment ever flown outside of Earth orbit.

Nasa mission to the moon: SLS rocket is to carry the “Orion” capsule into space

And yet it will only be a side aspect of the launch of the “Artemis I” mission. For the general public, on August 29 from 2:33 p.m. CEST (this is the time when the two-hour launch window opens) Nasa will be returning towards the moon. Although there are no people on board and the spaceship “Orion” will only fly past the moon – the mission is only the prelude: “Artemis II” (planned for 2024) is already supposed to transport astronauts around the moon. Humans have not come this close to the Earth’s satellite since December 1972, when the last two “Apollo” astronauts left the moon. “Artemis III” (planned for 2025 at the earliest) should then achieve what no one has striven for since 1972: put people on the moon. With “Artemis III” a woman and a person of color are to set foot on the moon for the first time.

But it’s not that far yet, the focus at the moment is on the Nasa mission “Artemis I” and the maiden flight of the Nasa rocket SLS. The Space Launch System is a good 98 meters high – slightly smaller than the famous “Saturn V”, which brought the “Apollo” missions to the moon (110 meters high), but the new Nasa rocket has more power.

Huge Nasa rocket Space Launch System looks outdated

Given the now successful partially reusable rockets from SpaceX the SLS seems a bit out of date: It starts with two boosters, which are separated a few minutes after the start and fall into the sea. Apart from that, NASA attaches importance to the sustainability of the moon missions this time: It is planned to build a space station in the moon’s orbit (“gateway”), which will serve as a way station for human missions to the moon. A permanent presence at the South Pole is to be established on the moon itself. There, researchers suspect water in the form of ice, which could be useful for colonization.

This lunar base is to play an important role in the distant future: as a starting point for later human flights to the Mars. On the moon, NASA wants to test everything that will later have to function on the much more distant planet Mars: (surviving) in a hostile environment, for example, or using the available resources to produce oxygen or fuel. Because every gram that a rocket does not have to carry to the moon or Mars saves money.

Nasa’s SLS rocket has cost huge sums of money – will the launch to the moon succeed?

The development of the Nasa rocket alone devoured unbelievable sums: 11 billion US dollars flowed into it, the project took significantly longer than planned and in the end was well above the planned budget. A single launch of the rocket is estimated to cost $4.1 billion Report of the NASA Inspector General in November 2021.

During the flight, the “Orion” capsule will move about 450,000 kilometers from Earth. It will fly past the moon and be up to 64,000 kilometers away from the moon’s far side. The Nasa capsule is designed to stay in space longer than any human spacecraft before it without docking at a space station. For NASA it is the crucial test: does the huge rocket work? Is the US really on its way to the moon again? Or does more work and money need to go into the Space Launch System? The launch to the moon will tell. (tab/tu with dpa/AFP)