Additional Artemis I Test Objectives to Provide Added Confidence in Capabilities
NASA Mission Update
During Artemis I, NASA plans to accomplish several primary objectives, including demonstrating the performance of the Orion spacecraft’s heat shield from lunar return velocities, demonstrating operations and facilities during all mission phases from launch countdown through recovery, and retrieving the crew module for post-flight analysis. As the first integrated flight of the Space Launch System rocket, Orion spacecraft, and the exploration ground systems at NASA’s 21st century spaceport in Florida, engineers hope to accomplish a host of additional test objectives to better understand how the spacecraft performs in space and prepare for future missions with crew.
Accomplishing additional objectives helps reduce risk for missions with crew and provides extra data so engineers can assess trends in spacecraft performance or improve confidence in spacecraft capabilities. Some of the additional objectives planned for Artemis I include:
Modal survey
On the European-built service module, Orion is equipped with 24 reaction control system (RCS) thrusters, small engines responsible for moving the spacecraft in different directions and rotating it. The modal survey is a prescribed series of small RCS firings that will help engineers ensure the structural margin of Orion’s solar array wings during the mission. Flight controllers will command several small firings of the engines to cause the arrays to flex. They will measure the impact of the firings on the arrays and evaluate whether the inertial measurement units used for navigation are experiencing what they should. Until the modal survey is complete, large translational burns are limited to 40 seconds.
Optical navigation camera certification
Orion has an advanced guidance, navigation, and control (GN&C) system, responsible for always knowing where the spacecraft is located in space, which way it’s pointed, and where it’s going. It primarily uses two star trackers, sensitive cameras that take pictures of the star field around Orion, the Moon, and Earth, and compares the pictures to its built-in map of stars. The Optical navigation camera is a secondary camera that takes images of the Moon and Earth to help orient the spacecraft by looking at the size and position of the celestial bodies in the image. At several times during the mission, the optical navigation camera will be tested to certify it for use on future flights. Once certified, the camera also can help Orion autonomously return home if it were to lose communication with Earth.
Solar array wing camera Wi-Fi characterization
The cameras affixed to the tips of the solar array wings communicate with Orion’s camera controller through an on-board Wi-Fi network. Flight controllers will vary the positioning of the solar arrays to test the Wi-Fi strength while the arrays are in different configurations. The test will allow engineers to optimize how quickly imagery taken by cameras on the ends of the arrays can be transmitted to onboard recorders.
Crew module/service module surveys
Flight controllers will use the cameras on the four solar array wings to take detailed photos of the crew module and service module twice during the mission to identify any micrometeoroid or orbital debris strikes. A survey conducted early on in the mission will provide images soon after the spacecraft has flown beyond the altitude where space debris resides and a second survey on the return leg will occur several days before reentry.
Large file delivery protocol uplink
Engineers in mission control will uplink large data files to Orion to better understand how much time it takes for the spacecraft to receive sizeable files. During the mission, flight controllers use the Deep Space Network to communicate with and send data to the spacecraft, but testing before flight hasn’t including using the network. The test will help inform engineers’ understanding of whether the spacecraft uplink and downlink capability is sufficient to support human rating validation of end-to-end communication prior to Artemis II, the first flight with astronauts.
Star tracker thermal assessment
Engineers hope to characterize the alignment between the star trackers that are part of the guidance, navigation and control system and the Orion inertial measurements units, by exposing different areas of the spacecraft to the Sun and activating the star trackers in the different thermal states. The measurements will inform the uncertainty in the navigation state due to thermal bending and expansion which ultimately impacts the amount of propellant needed for spacecraft maneuvers during crewed missions.
Radiator loop flow control
Two radiator loops on the spacecraft’s European Service Module help expel heat generated by different systems throughout the flight. There are two modes for the radiators. During speed mode, the radiator pumps operate at a constant speed to help limit vibrations and is the primary mode used during Artemis I and during launch for all Artemis flights. Control mode allows for better control of the radiator pumps and their flow rate, and will be used on crewed missions when more refined control of flow through the radiators is desired. This objective will test control mode to provide additional data about how it operates in space.
Solar array wing plume
Depending on the angle of Orion’s solar array wings during some thruster firings, the plume, or exhaust gasses, from those firings could increase the arrays’ temperature. Through a series of small RCS firings, engineers will gather data to characterize heating of the solar array wings.
Propellant slosh
Liquid propellant kept in tanks on the spacecraft moves differently in space than on Earth because of the lack of gravity in space. Propellant motion, or slosh, in space is hard to model on Earth, so engineers plan to gather data on the motion of the propellant during several planned activities during the mission.
Search acquire and track (SAT) mode
SAT mode is an algorithm intended to recover and maintain communications with Earth after loss of Orion’s navigation state, extended loss of communications with Earth, or after a temporary power loss that causes Orion to reboot hardware. To test the algorithm, flight controllers will command the spacecraft to enter SAT mode, and after about 15 minutes, restore normal communications. Testing SAT mode will give engineers confidence it can be relied upon as the final option to fix a loss of communications when crew are aboard.
Entry aerothermal
During entry of the spacecraft through Earth’s atmosphere, a prescribed series of 19 reaction control system firings on the crew module will be done to understand performance compared to projected data for the sequence. Engineers are interested in gathering this data during high heating on the spacecraft where the aerothermal effects are largest.
Integrated Search and Rescue Satellite Aided Tracking (SARSAT) functionality
The SARSAT test will verify connectivity between beacons to be worn by crew on future flights and ground stations receiving the signal. The beacons will be remotely activated and powered for about an hour after splashdown and will also help engineers understand whether the signal transmitted interferes with communications equipment used during recovery operations, including Orion’s built-in tri-band beacon which transmits the spacecraft’s precise location after splashdown.
Ammonia boiler restart
After Artemis I splashdown, Orion’s ammonia boiler will be turned off for several minutes then restarted to provide additional data about the system’s capability. Ammonia boilers are used to help control the thermal aspects of the spacecraft to keep its power and avionics systems cool, and keep the interior of the crew module at a comfortable temperature for future crews. In some potential contingency landing scenarios for crewed missions, crews may need to turn off the ammonia boiler to check for hazards outside the spacecraft, then potentially turn it back on to provide additional cooling.
Engineers will perform additional tests to gather data, including monitoring the heatshield and interior components for saltwater intrusion after splashdown. They also will test the GPS receiver on the spacecraft to determine the spacecraft’s ability to pick up the signal being transmitted around Earth, which could be used to augment the spacecraft’s ability to understand its positioning in the event of communications loss with mission controllers.
Collectively, performing additional objectives during the flight provides additional information engineers can use to improve Orion as NASA’s spacecraft that will take humans to deep space for years to come.
51 responses to “Additional Artemis I Test Objectives to Provide Added Confidence in Capabilities”
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pretty typical stuff
The cameras on the solar arrays may give some really amazing views of the spacecraft with the Moon and/or Earth in the background.
Happy Hiroshima day by the way. Being a fan of Nuclear Pulse Propulsion I am interested in all things “Fissile.”
fly the B29 tomorrow 🙂
Interesting aircraft. I read it had engine problems throughout the war. Should have went with the Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp.
And flying over “The Hump”, the top of the planet, with an airplane with not-so-great engines. They were the greatest generation.
the engine was well ahead of its time and needed another year of “work” which they did not have. the average life of the engine was around 50 hours but of course we were producing nearly 10000 a month 🙂
So..after flying around 20,000 miles, only four or five missions, the plane had probably had all four engines changed at least once. Drop tanks were also commonly used on fighters to extend range and expended in large numbers. World War 2 partly explains why rocket scientists were not so concerned with expending a comparatively simple rocket engine on satellites that would travel millions of miles around the Earth.
It also explains why reusability is not such a miracle for the launch industry. Just building a rocket for one use and sending it from the factory to launch compared to all the resources “expended” to reuse them is not much different.
yes, no sort of 🙂
it takes awhile to grasp this (it took me sometime) but there is next to nothing similar between airplane and rocket travel or more correctly airplane travel on earth and rocket travel in space.
1. airplane travel did not have to invent the hardware etc to survive at the destinations that they went to. 2. the prime market for airplanes at the start and still is the transportation of people between those destinations 3 airplanes can use in situ resources in real time while rockets cannot and 4the energy needed for the trip is released over a longer period of time…all these make the technical and cost challenges quite less
AND most important probably throw the value/cost ratio more into what is actually done with the payload than in airplanes. ie few airlines care what the people do when they get off the plane
so for instance the cost to operate Voyager or ISS has been the main driver in the cost of the program and made the cost to launch it…at least on par with the cost to operate it
but the big hurdle remains. the difference between the B29 or WW2 and spaceflight today is that they had to have humans do it. other than planting flags and singing songs, there is no NO N O economic reason to send people into space end of ride
And we have a new winner of the Simon Newcomb Award! ?
am I attacking AI? just those who think space is like aviation. of course I use to think that myself. then I grew out of it
I don’t think space is like aviation. Or space is like an ocean. Or any other bad analogies. I just think – and use examples I can get away with. If you look at how many parts are in those four Wright Duplex-Cyclone 18-cylinder radial engines and their constant speed propellers and compare that to a rocket engine….
I never had that problem like you did and it wasn’t in reference to AI. In terms of HSF the mere fact that private folk are willing to pay good money to buy rides into space shows there is an economic reason for HSF, else they wouldn’t be doing so.
One problem space experts who are stuck in the old government funding paradigm like you have is trying to find reasons that would justify it to the government, while in the private funding paradigm the money individuals are will to pay is sufficient to provide the reason for it. It is the reason that market driven economies always out perform government controlled economies in terms of progress and innovation.
I never had that problem like you did and it wasn’t in reference to AI. In terms of HSF the mere fact that private folk are willing to pay good money to buy rides into space shows there is an economic reason for HSF, else they wouldn’t be doing so.
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LOL they did those flights for the same reason my wife and her parents are spending three weeks seeing the US west before coming up to Seattle. we have money and its part of the joys of that. they are in all respects vanity flights that have no economic incentive involved…they are just the products of people having excess cash and spending it.
Musk must think the same thing…he is not expanding the Dragon fleet to deal with the anticipated hordes of people 🙂
dont confuse spending money because you can with some economic reason to do it
There are reasons to go aside from extraction of resources to send home. Some of the most successful cities on Earth have little in the way of local resources, but what they do have is large numbers of smart, driven people who are also creative.
Vegas is my favorite example of such.
Bingo, you just identified an economic reason for HSF and showed you are just not able to shake the old government funded spaceflight paradigm you grew up under.?
What is really funny is that a large part of the demand for the Boeing airliners you work with are for such “vanity” flights, aka tourism. Indeed, I have seen estimates that as many as 4 out of 5 passengers on airlines are tourists which is why it is funny that you laugh at it as a economic reason for human space flight.
As a side note, if the environmentalists get their way and get bans on leisure flying about 80% of airline traffic will disappear along with the demand for jet airliners.
Good morning. I use to think that and 20 years ago gave a speech along those lines. so who knows you might have a longer event horizon than my thoughts did and I could now be wrong and you be correct….I doubt it but five years from now lets see
some similar things are there and its tempting to make the parallel bewteen say the US Mail and the subsidies of airline passengers which started out as the reasonably rich. ….but 20 years would be in airplane travel at least the 1940’s but really the 1950’s and well quickly the two dont compare
as my thoughts have matured its become clear to me that the reason why is that really there is nothing to do for these people once they get into space. when my wife and family and I go on an airplane the trip itself ie the flying part is not the real adventure. the adventure is going somewhere and seeing/doing something not possible where we live. what these folks do is get into space and get their Iphone out 🙂
so I am imagining a flight around the world where you take off and land from where you start and thats the trip.
keep dreaming though
Gerard K. O’Neill envisioned miles-in-diameter artificial hollow spinning moons where tens of billions of humans live and Earth as a sparsely populated vacation destination. How many miles in diameter seems to be a big question as people do not like to think of themselves as being confined. But we are confined for most of our lives. Space is the next step.
could be I dont see it anytime soon I’ve served my time in the USN and lived on ships where there was next to no privacy . I dont see the joy of that
I don’t recall any miles-in-diameter spherical ships in the Navy Robert.
My calculator says a sphere about 16 miles in diameter has an internal surface area of over 900 square miles. See how that works? I see a lot of joy in that.
Building megastructures in space is way different than building them on Earth because there is no gravity and all the solar energy you want. This was the genius of O’Neill, realizing that shooting material from the Moon into space would enable the production of such structures.
we wont have those in 100 years
Think about glass blowers….using Space Solar Power driven magnetic fields and microwaves to shape immense masses of molten metal. All you have to do is have rail guns launch those tons of lunar metal into space, hour after hour and very soon, you have a Bernal Sphere. 10 million tons a year is a reasonable number that would take perhaps half a dozen rail guns. The Moon is a near perfect factory site. More guns, more metal, more Spheres.
Use your imagination. That is where things like the Panama Canal and F-1 rocket engines come from. Certainly not from smaller/cheaper-is-better NewSpace ideology. I like to think about 42,000 Bernal Spheres instead of that space junk nightmare of crummy LEO internet repeaters.
The total land surface area of Earth is about 57,308,738 square miles, of which about 33% is desert and about 24% is mountainous. Subtracting this uninhabitable 57% (32,665,981 mi 2) from the total land area leaves 24,642,757 square miles or 15.77 billion acres of habitable land.
There is likely some “sweet spot” regarding space habitats with spheres being so many miles in diameter being the most efficient to mass produce. If it is a number like I used, say around 16 miles, the math is easy; we can build habitats with vast amounts of living area in space.
I dont see the money
Global utility industry revenue is over 6 trillion dollars a year.
Climate Change is real.
Space Solar Power has no real technical challenges.
I see it.
I am sure that the folks that have flown in space would disagree with you. The space tourists seem to feel that it was worth the cost and most would probably go again.
As for the recreational and entertainment facilities, give them time, they will emerge just as they did at the tourist destinations on Earth after tourism became a major industry.
Would that apply to recreational flying as well? Awful lot of light aircraft that couldn’t be economically justified if put to the test.
Yep, Oshkosh wouldn’t exist along with most general aviation. But they do because folks who live in a free market society are free to spend money on the hobbies and pleasures they want, not what the experts say is economically justified.
Well…yes and no. It all depends on how you look at it.
First, when you use the word market that has little to do with accomplishing a mission like exploration, which has no ROI. See how that works? A scientific mission and a wartime mission is similar in that it is not being done for profit, it is being done to accomplish a goal. You can argue that applies to transporting people but it is a very thin argument. I am not arguing against reusability – I believe it is the future, I am just questioning if that future is here yet.
Second, you burn up energy and wear out your hardware over a shorter period of time but the distance your payload is traveling is orders of magnitude greater; hundreds of millions of miles in the case of satellites. It is like an airliner that flies around the world a thousand times on one load of fuel. But people still go nuts over the hardware being expended even though it makes perfect sense because that hardware would have worn out and been sent to the boneyard going the same distance on Earth. I believe NASA made a big mistake not driving home this message during Apollo.
Third, Human Space Flight has nothing to do with economics, it is about the survival imperative, an insurance policy for our species. Unfortunately, mammon being the demon demi-god of this world means Space Solar Power is about the only viable path to expanding humankind into the solar system and beyond. And this massive undertaking is being repeatedly defeated because of individual greed; no single billionaire can own and exploit it, so they work against it. A lunar industrial base manufacturing Space Solar Power components will require, as I have said before, thousands if not tens of thousands of technicians onsite.
🙂 yes maybe no it all depends on it
I dont disagree with much of it, some but what we disagree with is unimportant except
human spaceflight is not done for survival imperative. at the rate it is being done there is no chance of a lunar base say surviving if the earth is wiped out. all they have ahead is a slow death
its done for pork.
we long ago stopped doing it for n ational glory its all about pork. and SLS is that pork
Define Pork.
We have Human Space Flight because if America did not have it and Russia or China did then we would be second or third best. The American people will support politicians who prevent that unhappy circumstance. People who work in states with jobs that support Human Space Flight will support those politicians. And corporations that contract to provide Human Space Flight get to develop new technology with that money. Is all of that “Pork” because it does not make Elon and other billionaires more rich? It actually does make Elon the king of porkdom but don’t tell his Cult followers that. The space station to nowhere, which is why spacex exists, is the goddess of all pork flying over our heads.
Pork is useless projects, mostly military. SLS is far, far, from useless.
As for a self-supporting Moonbase, it would not take as much as you think.
The peaks of eternal sunlight near the lunar poles would provide energy, there is water, and there is plenty of material for shielding. Volatiles could actually be mined from the asteroid belt, it would just take months or years for the stuff to arrive. Once a pipleline is started that is a constant supply. And that is all you need. Circular “Sleeper Trains” could provide one gravity for the majority of a person’s day and keep them healthy and a sperm/ovum bank can prevent inbreeding. And breeder reactors would produce nuclear fissionables and fissile material out of local resources to include thorium. With fissile material and alloy discs you can lift immense masses into space from the Moon.
Just need Amazon women on the Moon, which I wrote about in my wordpress blog back in 2015.
There would be no “slow death.” A survival colony would slowly expand and create space colonies completely independent of Earth.
“Once a pipleline is started that is a constant supply. And that is all
you need. Circular “Sleeper Trains” could provide one gravity for the
majority of a person’s day and keep them healthy and a sperm/ovum bank
can prevent inbreeding. And breeder reactors would produce nuclear
fissionables and fissile material out of local resources to include
thorium. With fissile material and alloy discs you can lift immense
masses into space from the Moon.”
And animals could be bred and slaughtered!!!
With apologies to Dr. Strangelove
“it is all about pork. And SLS is that pork”
Too true. In this case, we’re fortunate to be getting some exploration out of the deal.
In the Iron Age there was no reason for the Phoenicians to send ships to distant shores to explore or colonize – yet they did, and the world changed irrevocably because of it.
there was a reason. it was called economics. thats why Columbus sailed as well
Completely different circumstances. The Phoenicians had to invent the technology to sail into deep waters; Columbus used existing technology. Columbus at least had an idea that there’d be some sort of payoff in the end, though it turned out he was completely wrong in how it happened; the Phoenicians did not.
The day of judgement approaches for the Musk Cult.
Wailing and gnashing of teeth will prevail among the true believers as the forever-cursed and blasphemous NASA Moon rocket blasts off to glory and eclipses their faux-genius-hero.
They will lament while the rest of the world gives America a standing ovation!
This reads as a bit too dramatic IMO, but it’s true that the fanatic online haters are seriously coping right now
Just read the comments on any SpaceNews article even tangetially related to SLS/Artemis or posts on subreddits like r/SpaceX Lounge or the SLS section on the NSF forums
They never expected it would get this far without being canceled and now that it’s hapening and looking like it’s here to stay long term they are losing their shit trying to find excuses as to why none of that matters
10 years of their endless garbage hijacking all the space forums is as dramatic as it gets. I despise all of them. It is common knowledge Musk worshippers are the most toxic creeps on the internet, hands down.
Are we reading completely different sites? I’ve seen little in the way of ‘fanatic online haters’ having to ‘cope.’
The online haters seem to be of the pro-SLS variety against everything that exposes their weaknesses.
I haven’t seen any one struggling to cope with the reality of SLS/Orion’s pending first flight aside from the Flat Earth/Fake NASA types who are found on the less technical comment areas like Space.com‘s Facebook comment section.
I have seen many wanting SLS to be cancelled, and some who are convinced it soon will be, because they think it’s too expensive, given its limitations (low flight rate and HALO orbit).
In contrast there are a few in the technical comment sections who seem to be put into a state of serious distress when any SpaceX milestone is looming.
Probably need to get an operational vehicle before worrying about bells and whistles. Post mission analysis is all too likely to be a forensic one from telemetry as it is. Somewhat more likely to succeed in first attempt than Starship, but there aren’t several back ups in the immediate pipeline either.
Somewhat more likely……Hilarious!
It is hilarious that Starship is a failure if both stages aren’t recovered while SLS is a success if enough of Orion is recovered to identify.
It is going while the shiny is expected to blow up several more times. And the shiny, when and if it flies operationally, will never carry a human being in its present configuration with no escape system.
You are so deluded it is painful. Wailing and gnashing.
Fortunately the USN is good at finding and fishing objects out of the ocean.?
True, though the question is whether it’s a floater or a job for deep ROVs.
This should not be a surprise. Orion has already been demonstrated through reentry, splashdown and recovery.
The bigger ifs are whether the first European Service Module / Orion integration is more effective than the first CST 100 / Atlas V integration was, which will be critical to getting it to the right place and vector to reenter.
Exactly. It is not the single item that is the concern so much as that this configuration has never flown. It is quite complex enough to hide a number of gotchas.
Orion has selfie-sticks?
;-D
One lesson that that space exploration in the western hemisphere can learn from China is the PR value of selfie cameras on their spacecraft.
Yes, it was a big miscalculation not to have “selfie” cameras documenting the deployment of Webb.