Artemis I Launch Delayed to Mid- to Late 2021
by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor
NASA Associate Administrator Steve Jurcyk said on Friday that the first Artemis mission to the moon will not launch later this year but will hopefully fly in the mid- to late 2021 time frame.
It marks yet another delay in a program that is already running years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget. The slip potentially makes the Trump Administration’s goal of landing astronauts at the south pole of the moon in 2024 more difficult to achieve.
The Artemis I mission will send an automated Orion spacecraft around the moon. The second flight will launch a four-member crew around the moon, with a landing by two astronauts planned for 2024.
Jurcyk revealed the delay in remarks made during the Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium (LSIC) meeting at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md.
Artemis’ pacing item is the Space Launch System (SLS) core stage, which is now at the NASA Stennis Space Center in Mississippi being prepared for a full static fire test known as the green run.
Jurcyk said he expected the core stage to be shipped from Stennis to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida in late summer or early fall following the hot fire test.
The booster will then be integrated at NASA KSC with the Orion spacecraft and an upper stage booster. Orion is now undergoing vacuum chamber tests at the NASA Plum Brook Station in Ohio.
Jurcyk said contracts for the Human Landing System that will take astronauts to the lunar surface will be awarded within weeks. NASA will do a down select from among the dozen companies that were given study contracts.
NASA is also making progress on the Lunar Gateway, a human-tended space station that will orbit the moon and serve as a base for missions to the surface.
Maxar Technologies is developing the power and propulsion module. Jurcyk said NASA is in the midst of contract negotiations with Northrop Grumman for a small habitat module that will house the crew.
The space agency is also preparing to award a contract for Lunar Gateway logistical support, he added.
39 responses to “Artemis I Launch Delayed to Mid- to Late 2021”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Not surprising. The first flight of SLS will continue to slip into the future, IMHO.
If they never fly it they won’t have to worry about the Boeing software failing.
Yeah, your statement can’t be considered an exaggeration. Given what’s been released from the press release two weeks ago, I’m fully expecting more problems to be found.
anything is possible…but I guess I am curious what the latest delay is all about 🙂
Yeah, software is not usually the kind of problem where you can look a year into the future and say the problem will take that long to iron out. Even MCAS on the Max was moved forward a few months at a time. If I were to take a guess it’d would be the engines or the structure. I wonder how many SSME experts with experience are on the program. It’s been long enough since we’ve used an SSME that we could be suffering from the Russian disease of graying out the experience base.
MCAS was as thing go fairly trouble free. (I helped design it) we actually had more trouble with the fbw on the spoilers 🙂
a guess is that they are unsure how the green fire will go …and are trying to sort out some issues with that. that is a pivot point. they are coming into an election cycle…if the thing goes bang in the green fire…well that could be bad. so I am pretty sure they are rechecking everything
the STarliner failure mode bothers me a little bit because I am not for sure we are “hearing” all the issues that were there. I know for a fact they have pulled in three of the software experts from the Dreamliner (which was a hard luft ) to do some analysis. I know this because they are family 🙂
The stuff I’m reading about how time was dealt with on Starliner has my head spinning since I’ve been dealing with orbital velocity imposed time requirements for a very long time. That Boeing allowed a sequencer to fly that was not based on a robust and self checking time base is beyond shocking. They’d have been better off with horizon/sun sensors and old fashioned star finders.
the entire thing seems strange to me. I dont know how the shop that builds the communications sats work…but how and why they did what they did well as you say scratching my head, this is not how the airplanes do it nor any of the PGM that Boeing builds does it
the notion is to find both the time and a state vector. doubtless the Centaur has that after it finishes powered flight…but I dont quite understand why 1) the capsule which has GPS receivers capable of doing that ie you cannot tell me that the vehicle cannot find its own time and velocity vector in real time…and compare it to whatever data it is getting external (the airplanes do that)
and 2) the state vector is something that the capsule just reaches out and grabs at some “time” before separation…because if nothing else of the abort system it needs to know “where” it is
plus the entire story of “we would have found this had we run a full up sim” doesnt makes sense. partial sims are common in complex software…and they start and end at certain points
OK well one of those “cycle points” was has to be the end of Centaur powered flight…boom engines shut off, sim starts…so well the routines or whatever that got the wrong data should be in play
a more reasonable explanation to me is that the “box” filling in for the Centaur avionics was not that high fidelity to the Centaur…and there is somemishmach there
Most observatories do it like this.
1) An old fashioned thermal controlled time base that drives a piece of hardware like the old Dallas RTC modules that you used to see on PC’s. There are hardware state machines that measure skew and place skew in a hardware register that you can associate a skew with a hardware time.
3) PC clocks synced with NTP to a local time server and to several time servers offsite.
4) WWV. Yes we still use it.
5) GPS synced local NTP servers.
All of these are checked against each other and also used to check for any skew in the clocks. Skew is what killed the Starliner flight to my understanding. It was a mismatch in the flight sequencer caused from syncing to the start of countdown of the booster and assuming that was supposed to be the time of burnout from the Centaur. It’s my understanding that the flight sequencer then raced to make up 7 hours of flight sequence that ‘should’ have been executed. A skew detector would have detected this, and there should have damn well been some oversight code to prevent a pile up of flight events in such a short period. Upon the detection of the massive skew, control should have been tossed to humans actively. Not to mention this should have been simulated and drilled.
In the Oler deep space network and the two 1 meter telescopes (one in Santa Fe and one in Bosnia), the local repeater network and the house here in Istanbul and texas…we do all but three bravo…ie several time servers off site. the three master cylinders (childhood comic analogy) on each home network are interlinked with stand alone 1, 4 (although we mostly use WWVB we can use WWV) and 5 except we run independent sat nav disciplined oscillators and timers with GPS, Glonass and Galileo.
its all pretty stand alone and impervious to hacking and its self starting.
It’s my understanding that the flight sequencer then raced to make up 7
hours of flight sequence that ‘should’ have been executed.”
that is not “my” understanding but if you are correct then the entire accident/event is even more baffling as it is basically vectoring the vehicle with no regard for actual “real time” or the results of the burns
It would be about like waking Juliet November (my favorite B777 here) up seven hours after we were suppose to leave for Manilla and she tried to do the trip sequence anyway..in the time remaining.
I am not telling you that your understanding is wrong, its just if you are correct then wow…itsworse then I thought.
wonder who wrote that code 🙂
Why don’t you ask your family members that you said worked on it, the ones from the Dreamliner, and give Doug a scoop to attract readers?
ah that discussion will happen…as I understand it from the emails flying around they go onto the project next week. it will take them sometime to come to it…but Iam sure well we all talk 🙂
as for the scoop I will see 🙂
I’m not saying I’m right, I’m reading into what I’ve read online. 1) that the mission sequence clock started with booster bootup when it was supposed start with Centaur startup or sep I don’t know which, and then 2) yes just as you describe a race of orbital changes that used up so much fuel, the ISS docking was lost, and they had the cut the flight short. You have to write me and tell me what you do with those scopes. I’d love to find out about what you have going on.
Forgot to mention, I have a fav “JN” when I fly too. It’s a PW-5. She’s a fun little Polish woman to go flying with. She takes to Az thermals like a seagull.
wow the little rascal…I am so envious. what joy that must be riding the AZ thermals. my dream this summer assuming all goes well is to get back into sailplanning. its been way to long, over 10 years…but a glider port has opened in Izmir (Aydin) and one has opened near Santa Fe…so I should be able to do it “at both homes” its something I really want to do…
what fun (what normally do you use as a tow?)
flynavyF14 (at) hotmail.com
All 16 of the surplus RS-25’s have been test fired with the new controller hardware and at least a few 3D metal-printed replacement parts so I doubt it’s the engines.
Structure is a likelier bet given all the welding kerfuffles of the past couple years.
But, Boeing being Boeing, one has to figure iffy software to be the leading candidate for culprit in this latest delay. Even if no obvious bugs have surfaced, the development practices and the code itself are likely due for a mandatory Starliner-level audit/scrub. That’s going to add, at a minimum, months of delay even if nothing bad turns up.
And if something bad – or several somethings bad – turn up, I don’t expect we great unwashed will hear about it unless one of Eric Berger’s moles spills the beans.
Perhaps an endangered species has been found living in the long-disused test stand where the Green Run test is supposed to take place.
What, you think they found an honest politician?
Why would you think I would think that? No, were this really the case, the key player would be much more likely to be some green zealot bureaucrat with an Interior Dept. job. Maybe someone who was told a witness had seen unicorns dancing in the flame trench.
I was joking in any case. It’s just SLS being SLS. Just when you think it can’t possibly go any slower, it does.
yes
This is garbage. They should be bending metal on every piece of hardware already and training astronauts for every job they will need to perform. Preparatory missions should already be scheduled. Instead we get hopeful PR from NASA and bull***t from the Trump Administration.
Is anyone surprised. If this thing EVER flies, I’ll be shocked. It is stream of never-ending pork without actually having to deliver anything.
Its gotta fly sometime
I guess the crane ride at the salvage yard qualifies as flying it to it’s final destination.
Heh.
Final Destination 7 – The Boneyard
No it doesn’t. Do we really need to go over all the never-flown items on NASA’s backtrail?
oh surprise
Embracing Artemis is the first step towards a trillion dollar
cislunar space economy according to space industry executive Tory Bruno
this is of course the biggest joke
Considering the box poor Tory is in, what would you expect him to say? His company is unlikely to survive more than a few more years even if he genuflects before all the expected idols and says all the expected things. Deviating from the script would simply hasten that end.
I am starting to think that 2021 will be the year both SLS and Musk’s thing fail
At least Elon Musk has the FH and Dragon2 that could reach the Moon. And the Raptor would be a good engine to use for a lunar lander and next generation Falcon. What have the taxpayers to show for the SLS and Orion except that it kept the solid rocket production base going so they could build the Stick II, Omega, for the U.S.A.F.
Hmm, I wonder if the Orion could be put on the Stick II to serve the ISS in place of the Starliner.
You mean Corndog 2: Electric Boogaloo? That would require Corndog 2 to actually be a thing. Given that it’s going to get downselected from NSSL Phase 2 later this year, that ain’t happening.
I’m thinking 2022 looks like a better bet for SLS’s failure. Short of a Green Run explosion, it can’t fail until it actually flies. The recent pace of delays makes me think the Green Run might not happen until sometime next year so there is certainly some possibility you could be right. But I still think an in-flight failure in 2022 has a higher probability.
As for Starship, you’ve said numerous times that it has already failed.
Steve Jurczyk’s name is mispelled several times in this article.
Well, they are staying on schedule, slipping one year every year.
This is a sad time. My father worked for NASA for 25 years. This was the time of the X-15 and Apollo. The goals were clearly stated and NASA was an honest and respected department of the government. They presented facts as they were, warts and all. That is not the NASA I see today. They are merely a sounding board for this administration. Promising things that are impossible to accomplish on timescales that are ludicrous. “We’ll be on the moon in 2024”. Bull. I can’t blame NASA and its employees. They have to kowtow to the imbeciles now in office or risk cuts in funding if they speak truth to power. This is a very sad time for America.
This is a sad time. My father worked for NASA for 25 years. This was during the time of the X-15 and Apollo. The goals were clearly stated and NASA was an honest and respected department of the government. They presented facts as they were, warts and all. That is not the NASA I see today. They are merely a sounding board for this administration. Promising things that are impossible to accomplish on timescales that are ludicrous. “We’ll be on the moon in 2024”. Bull. I can’t blame NASA and its employees. They have to kowtow to the imbeciles now in office or risk cuts in funding if they speak truth to power. This is a very sad time for America.
It’s a sad time for NASA. America, not so much.
The Trump administration is mainly guilty of trying to start a fire under NASA’s and Boeing’s arses that was long overdue. Their main miscalculation was supposing said fire would actually induce movement. Pretty obviously, both NASA and Boeing have chosen to allow their respective hindquarters to cook, then burn to ash rather than bestir themselves.
Fortunately, SpaceX is on the case. And even Blue Origin is moving faster than NASA and Boeing.
I think that is an impressive looking rocket nonetheless