Progress Continues Toward Artemis I Launch
NASA Mission Update
Inside the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, technicians continue to prepare the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft for Artemis I.
During work to repair the source of a hydrogen leak, engineers identified a loose fitting on the inside wall of the rocket’s engine section, where the quick disconnect for the liquid hydrogen umbilical attaches. The component, called a “collet,” is a fist-sized ring that guides the quick disconnect during assembly operations. Teams will repair the collet by entering the engine section in parallel with other planned work for launch preparations. Technicians have replaced the seals on the quick disconnect of the tail service mast umbilical and will reattach the umbilical plate once the loose collet is addressed.
NASA continues to target the late August launch period and will identify a specific target launch date after engineers have examined the collet.
Technicians continue work associated with battery activations, and plan to turn on the core stage batteries this weekend, before they are installed on the rocket. Next up, teams will start the flight termination systems operations, which include removing the core stage and booster safe and arm devices for calibration and removing and replacing the command receiver decoders with the flight units. The safe and arm devices are a manual mechanism that put the flight termination system in either a “safe” or “arm” configuration while the command receiver decoders receive and decode the command on the rocket if the system is activated.
Meanwhile on the Orion spacecraft, teams installed a technology demonstration that will test digital assistance and video collaboration in deep space. Engineers are also conducting powered testing on the crew module and European service module heaters and sensors.
25 responses to “Progress Continues Toward Artemis I Launch”
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That river of tears will flow soon.
not sure why/what?
Probably taxpayers contemplating the awful waste.
that seems unlikely it has affected not a single political race
safe flights
Well a flight around the Moon this year.
Looking that way. A tad ironic if Orion gets to NRHO before CAPSTONE.
It’ll be bittersweet at best. Building a sterile, unsafe, and completely unsustainable technology to do it will mean the mission (and all subsequent ones, though I doubt there would be many) could never be more than stunts that very little could be built on.
it is unclear that any part of the program is economically sustainable
the lander plus SLS/Orion probably equal 7 billion a mission wont last long probably wont get started
Apart from HLS, totally agree. Literally the only sustainable part of Artemis, and will come to be seen in history as The program itself rather than a component of it.
What SLS launches to is totally outside the caring level of its supporters. the purpose of SLS is to fund jobs in poor areas of the country which would not have any good jobs. and it does that
However the pieces of it (SLS/Orion and Lunar starship ) are totally incompatible and likely very costly
I appreciate the history behind all this, and I wouldn’t trade Apollo for a slower and more considered timeline, but they’re really running wild with the pork and the cost-plus.
its actually far cheaper than Saturn
Definitely not. Saturn/Apollo was like nothing that had ever existed in all of history. SLS/Orion is deliberately a sockpuppet show of Shuttle technology, and still fails even the standards at the time.
Thats the funny part of it. SLS is as new a vehicle as if it was brand new. in the structure of it, where the cost is there is little derivative. the ET is long long gone
No, no, no. Let’s not play that game. There’s nothing new about SLS. The Senate just made up a bunch of moving goalposts to squeeze the taxpayer, and none of them had anything to do with being a good rocket.
thats not true. the ET morphed into a load carrying vehicle ready to handle a second stage. the difficulties to build the vehicle were as typical understated the trick is that of similar lift to Saturn it will cost a lot
so will Starship
I tracked this whole program since it was the Direct/Jupiter proposal. I’ll tell you for certain that nothing about it today has been driven by requirements. It’s something a handful of politicians from the South imposed on NASA after Ares was cancelled. They made it up to profit themselves and a few contractors, and that’s it. Nobody wanted it.
Nobody wanted it at all, ever.
If your standard for costing “a lot” is SLS-Orion, then, no, Starship will not cost “a lot.” Knock off a couple of zeros.
If Starship cost a dime to develop it will be around 10 billion to get to something useful
Given that the first Starship orbital mission will include the launch and deployment of Starlink ver. 2.0 satellites, the bar of “getting to something useful” could well be crossed in a matter of weeks. That’s hardly to say development ends once Starlink deployments become possible. But Elon’s most recent public estimate of total development costs for Starship were $5 to 10 billion. That seems about right.
Hmmm, +-$10 Billion to develop a transportation system vs +-$10 Billion per Atlantic reef. SLS and Starship obviously near identical in cost and capability. Decisions decisions.
Hardly. Each SLS launch, ignoring Orion, EGS, etc., costs more per mission than the Saturn V did; in 2022 dollars, SV cost ~$1.5 billion per launch, while the SLS hardware alone is $2.2 billion. Given that it’s also less capable, that cost is unacceptable.
While the overall program cost may be lower, that also isn’t comparable, given everything that had to be built an invented in the 1960s, versus the rehashing of old hardware and ideas for SLS and Orion. Nearly $100 billion for a much less capable program by 2025 should be no one’s idea of far cheaper.
Starship is also providing a lot of jobs in what used to be the poorest county in TX, though that was hardly the main motivation for SpaceX to go there.
SLS and Orion are certainly very costly.
I have no idea what you mean by SLS-Orion and HLS Starship being incompatible. Orion and HLS Starship will each sport a compatible docking interface. That’s as compatible as they have to be. Perhaps you meant to say non-comparable. That is certainly true, especially on the matter of costs.
Zeno’s Paradox is cheering you on, Artemis!