Launch Dates Set for Artemis I Mission
PARIS (ESA PR) — With the rocket now on the launchpad, the Artemis I Moon mission is getting real: 29 August is the first opportunity for the SLS rocket to blast off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center’s launchpad 39B in Florida, USA.
This first Artemis mission will put NASA’s Orion spacecraft and its European Service Module to the test during a journey beyond the Moon and back. The spacecraft will enter lunar orbit, using the Moon’s gravity to gain speed and propel itself almost half a million km from Earth – farther than any human-rated spacecraft has ever travelled.
This journey will serve as a test of both the Orion spacecraft and its SLS rocket ahead of crewed flights to the Moon. In this instance, no crew will be on board Orion, and the spacecraft will be controlled by teams here on Earth. The second Artemis mission, however, will see four astronauts travel around the Moon on a flyby voyage around our natural satellite.
Mission duration depends on the launch date and even time. It will last between 20 to 40 days, depending on how many orbits of the Moon mission designers decide to make. This flexibility in mission length is necessary to allow the mission to end as intended with a splashdown during daylight hours in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of California, USA.
Two more dates are available if weather is not ideal on 29 August. The Artemis Moon mission can also be launched on 2 September and 5 September.
Orion is the only spacecraft capable of human spaceflight outside Earth orbit and high-speed reentry from the vicinity of the Moon. More than just a crew module, Orion includes ESA’s European Service Module, the powerhouse that fuels and propels Orion.
The European Service Module – or ESM – provides for all astronauts’ basic needs, such as water, oxygen, nitrogen, temperature control, power and propulsion. Much like a train engine pulls passenger carriages and supplies power, the European Service Module will take the Orion capsule to its destination and back.
The creation of the ESM has been a truly pan-European effort. Around 26 European companies were enlisted by ESA’s prime contractor, Airbus, to develop and build the module, which in total comprises more than 20 000 parts and components. From electrical equipment to engines, solar panels, fuel tanks and life-support elements, Europe’s world-class scientific and technological skills are at the heart of this mission.
The Artemis I mission is the first of the Artemis programme to take humans to the Moon sustainably. Aside from the ESA’s service module for the Orion missions of which four are already ready or being built with contracts in place for two more. ESA is also supplying habitation and refuelling modules for the international lunar Gateway station that will orbit our natural satellite. The building of more European Service Module’s as well as a series of independent European lunar landers are to be decided at ESA’s Ministerial Council later this year as part of ESA’s exploration strategy Terrae Novae that includes landing a European astronaut on the Moon by 2030.
66 responses to “Launch Dates Set for Artemis I Mission”
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They did not mention going to Mars. That is an improvement.
This article is right up your alley. I’m ready to give it a try.
https://www.sciencealert.co….
Very interesting. Thanks P.K.
So….space elevators are not a good idea. They are like Helium 3 and cold fusion and several other pseudoscience favorites. People say they are serious about them being practical but…they are not (either not serious or not practical). What is practical is what we can actually build in various time frames like ten years. That’s how long it took to dig the Suez and Panama Canals. For something like powering the planet with Space Solar Power, go with a quarter century from landing on the Moon with the first construction equipment to actually beginning to get useful power from antennae fields on Earth. That would be with trillions of dollars sending Super Heavy Lift Vehicles from various nations every week. We can actually do that right now to stop Climate Change. I would be in my 90’s if that happened. I might live to see it if tomorrow they decided to do it.
Gerard K. O’Neill was a visionary that understood you can build megastructures in space because it is zero gravity and you have plenty of energy. Somewhat like glass blowing on a very large scale. His ultimate goal was space colonies, miles-in-diameter-artificial-spinning-hollow-moons, heading and trailing Earth in orbit around the sun, in solar orbit.
The following paragraph from the article is B.S. so I am not ready to give it a try. While Ceres is of great interest to me as the best first destination for human missions Beyond Earth and Lunar Orbit, because it is easy to land on (unlike Mars) and might have an ocean (unlike Mars), more solar energy is needed for space colonies. Any semi-permanent science base on Ceres would likely have a circular “sleeper train” under the ice providing artificial gravity sleeping and exercise spaces for inhabitants. Not practical for large populations.
“This would be logistically awful, too. If the population grows too large for one settlement, multiple settlements may be required. If multiple colonies are in orbit around the Sun, they could drift apart, creating other problems, such as inter-settlement travel. If they’re orbiting a common body, collision avoidance becomes a problem.”
A lunar elevator would work fine. I wonder if that could be Dyson Harrop powersat on its own…if dangling farther Earthward.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/…
If between Sun and Earth…maybe stop flares:
https://arxiv.org/abs/1709….
Good luck with that “lunar elevator.”
It is total nonsense.
Why don’t you expound on something that would work- like replacing the SLS boosters with New Glenn first stages? Or making the SLS RS-25s recoverable with a return pod?
I’ve seen lunar elevators described as being feasible, due to the stresses on a cable from the lunar surface to a tether point in GEO being less than from the Earth’s surface to GEO, which would not be feasible with current materials tech. It’s described as being workable because the moon is tidally locked.
The problem I see, and have not seen explained is that the Earth is not tidally locked to the moon. An anchor point orbiting the earth in GEO orbits the Earth once per day. Tie that to a point on the moon that orbits the Earth once every 28 days and you’ll be winding up your cable around the Earth lile a ball of yarn.
If the anchor point for the elevator in GEO is somehow orbiting the Earth with stability once every 28 days, the problem now comes with figuring out how to rendezvous with it, bacause the orbital period of the vehicle trying to get to it is 28 times too fast.
What have I missed in this lunar space elevator concept that allows it to make sense?
I’m not a fan of the Lunar elevator. My understanding is that the tether anchor point would be on Lunar nearside and stretch past L1 far enough to counterbalance the tether weight below L1. It would end very roughly 250,000 km higher than Geo and have the same orbital period as the moon. Never even coming close to GEO or any other Earth orbit. The 28 day ‘orbit’ ~100,000 km below the moon is slow enough that a release would be on reentry trajectory. This is my understanding anyway.
I am a fan of Lunar rotovators. Tip speed under 1,600 m/s depending on altitude of center of mass. well within material technology today. Could catch inbound from Earth and use the energy to lift payload from the Lunar surface.
Also can be used to catch returning interplanetary vehicles. The +- 1,500 m/s tip velocity plus Lunar orbital velocity could catch probes returning with 2,500 m/s Earth relative excess velocity. Could drop them to the surface or change the vector to one somewhat more benign for Earth reentry.
Maybe a sail could steer the tail. It would not wrap Earth…merely point at it.
Bezos and Blue Origin should love that paper. Maybe BO will hire the plucky Finnish author?
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Bezos should pay for the payload and Musk for the rocket. If only Bezos would quit with the lawsuits.
Did a bit of BOTE while driving this morning and while stopped at red lights. A Ceres beanstalk would have a Ceres synchronous orbit of 1,000 to 1,500 km above the surface. At 5,000 or so km it could release or catch payloads at 1,000 m/s. If I got my numbers right, a non-tapered elevator could be built out of low grade steel. That might be possible to construct from in situ materials. High grade steel or aluminum could handle a high throughput of payloads in both directions without taper.
This was hasty numbers and I’m not current. Many years ago I ran a few numbers suggesting asteroids as transportation hubs.
Ceres is mostly ice. Several hundred million tons of “low grade steel” is not going to materialize out of nowhere, especially with so little solar power.
All of these schemes are just a way to distract people from space colonies.
Transparent.
Creators speed. a successful launch will be good for the effort to send folks out of low earth orbit, The Republic, NASA and hopefully our group that is trying to put a 6 inch telescope and HF Jupiter antenna on the Gateway 🙂 fly safe
That sort of tells it all, eh? Poor old Orion, sitting around for years, waiting for SLS to finally fly.
The last time Orion flew was the OFT-1 test flight of December 2014(!!), when Orion was sent into Medium Earth Orbit by a Delta IV Heavy launch vehicle.
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
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poor old Orion is not finished
Which one? The Orion spacecraft currently awaiting launch for Artemis-1 was delivered to NASA way back in 2019!
Even that Orion could have been ready for launch a year earlier than that, it it weren’t for Lockheed-Martin having to fix the problems with the European Service Module. Boy, that was some genius management by NASA, handing off the Orion service module job to Europe.
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That is one of my concerns. Equipment that sits around for years often develops problems. I am sure that considerable attention has been paid to keeping it fully functional. At the same time, I remember trying to get a piece of equipment operating after it sat untouched through the winter.
Yes, of course a deep space capsule is just like your lawnmower.
“One of my concerns”….LOL.
Only spacex fanboys.
You’re right. A space capsule is nothing at all like a lawnmower. A capsule is much, much more susceptible to having parts go bad when in storage. What exactly do you do for a living? I’m interested because you continue to make engineering judgements that no competent engineer would agree with. And for the record, I’m not a SpaceX fanboy. Anybody here can attest to that. In fact, I’ve been rather critical of SX on these boards.
You are attacking me…why? Because I disagreed with some of your past comments. Disagreed strongly. Payback I guess. Go away, I am not interested in a p*ssing contest with you. I agree with many of your comments and I do not think I have identified you as a spacex fanboy. If I did, my mistake. If you want to be a creep and demand creds and attack the person not the argument- that is on you.
As for it “being a concern” that the Orion capsule has been “sitting in storage too long”, that is just something for the Musk fans to whine about. Hence the lawnmower remark. And you also obviously want to cry about something. As if a piece of hardware that cost 12 billion dollars to develop is going to be neglected and go bad on the shelf. Absurd.
I don’t want to cry about anything. I want to have a back and forth discussion.
Also, I’m not attacking you. I disagree with your engineering judgements. I hope you are not someone who takes honest disagreement as an attack. If you are, you are either not an engineer or not one myself or any engineer I know would want to work with. By the way, that’s not an attack. That’s a fact.
Let’s look at the example of Starliner. Boeing had a ton of valve problems because of water intrusion. On a vehicle not stored nearly as long as Orion. My point is that space capsules are delicate things that don’t like to be stored. I don’t think the possibility that there could be a problem because of storage should just be dismissed. That’s all.
I doubt you would know a fact if it hit you up the side of the head.
For one thing…this is a public forum and “engineers” that cred brag are pests and self-identified creeps. That is the only fact in this case.
The truth is that, literally, libraries of death-to-SLS propaganda have flooded these forums for years. One reason why 9 out of 10 people who comment here are spacex fanboys. They have driven everyone else away. This is just more of the same. And you are taking part in it. Take some honest advice….stop replying with finger-wagging B.S. to someone who knows better than you what is actually going on here. You are clueless.
Ok, if I am clueless, educate me. I am very open to having my opinions changed.
Sorry…it is obvious you are very unhappy with me. Not going to play nice with you so that will only get worse. You do not seem open, just nasty. Have a good evening.
No, I am not at all unhappy with you. I’m not trying to cred brag, just trying to establish common ground. I’m genuinely interested in your experience with SLS/Orion.
Suuure you are. Just don’t reply to my comments and everything will be fine. Have a good evening.
I am interested. I know many here are interested in the inside scoop on SLS/Orion. The best way to shut up the fanboys is to give them hard data.
Quit your babbling. I am not going to jump through your hoops.
Grow up. Goodbye.
so what would you rate the chances of ICM coming out of storage and working. ?
At present? Zero, since it was never completed. When stored, the estimate was 2 to 2.5 years of additional work required till it could be launched. Since it is at NRL in caretaker status, I assume they use the DoD definition of that status. The key part of the DoD definition is “limited preservation”. I would be willing to bet it is in a corner of the processing lab and hasn’t been touched since stored.
there was no choice but to hand it off to the Europeans. no money
There was definitely a choice. The choice was to spend the money on an American service module or spend the money on development of another commercial cargo resupply vehicle and more missions.
ESA didn’t provide Orion’s service modules for free. They are providing them in trade for their obligations to the ISS. Instead of regular ATV cargo resupply missions they’re delivering a lesser number of ATV derrived Orion Service Modules.
NASA, while not paying for Orion’s service modules has had to make up for the lack of ATV missions with Commercial Cargo missions.
The longer it is until Artemis missions fly and longer between missions, the better the deal is for ESA and worse for NASA.
But since ESA is involved it makes it harder to scrape it.
No money? What, do you think Lockheed-Martin took any kind of pay cut, just because NASA handed off the Service Module job to the Europeans, the Service Module that Lockheed-Martin was already contracted to deliver? What kind of “savings” were made by throwing in the wastebasket 8 years of Lockheed-Martin development efforts?
The Europeans couldn’t get their European Service Module ready on time. Their problems delayed delivery of the first ESM by at least 18 months, maybe more. NASA had to use Lockheed-Martin assistance to the Europeans, to get the ESM back on track. What do you suppose those delays and extra work for Lockheed-Martin, cost NASA?
Do you think any of this messy process saved NASA one dime of money? I bet it added billions to the total cost of the Orion Program.
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yeap it saved NASA about 2 billion dollars . the same “deal” was cut to the Europeans on the service module that they got on the space station. in terms of bodies. the Europeans paid for the service module with cut the cost on Orion which is badly over budget
Oh really? How about you point out that cut in the Orion budget to me? At what year exactly did NASA have to start spending a lot less on Orion?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
I see a steady unbroken spending pattern for the Orion Program. NASA didn’t save a dime by handing off the Orion Service Module to the Europeans.
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they did not have to spend more
Yep, you went there. wow.
https://oig.nasa.gov/docs/I…
Post-Artemis II Development. The program is planning for an additional $819.6 million in
development costs not included in the baseline related to missions beyond Artemis II. These
include costs for development of key requirements such as docking, European Service Module
Orion main engines, and other development costs and upgrades related to the spacecraft
including vehicle thrust, optical communication, and propulsion. The program classifies
development of these capabilities as “Mission Support Packages” in order to distinguish these
efforts from costs that are directly related to baseline core vehicle development costs.
I’ve read it cover to cover sometime ago
Silly, it’s about jobs, not saving any money, after all it’s only taxpayer money and that is an inexhaustible supply.?
Far superior to the toxic dragon. The spacex capsule has an “escape system” that is more likely to kill the crew than anything else that could go wrong. The exact opposite of what it is supposed to do.
The Orion escape tower is awesome.
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
And of course the spacex fanboy has to splash some cesspool. Another Musk/Trump worshiper and obsessed with guns so he is also a member of the church of the AR-15. The Trifecta.
What could have been, the original Lockheed-Martin service module for the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle, which was going to use a higher ISP methalox-propellant main rocket engine. That original Orion 604 was going to have a Delta-v of 5,700 fps.
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
The Orion MPCV launching for Artemis-1 with the European Service Module, has lost around 500 m/s Delta-v compared to the original 2006 design of Orion.
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I like hypergolics better for engine simplicity that far out. This is what the first lunar ship should have been
https://www.secretprojects….
If you must have a crogen—I like MADV’s RL-10
https://slidetodoc.com/conc…
For SuperHeavy? Methalox is Fine.
Now if Lunar Starship does work…I hope one looks like the MALLAR:
https://www.smithsonianmag….
Given the lunar MADV leveraging the Mars Base Camp MADV core technologies I expect that is going to make Lockmart a strong contender to be NASA’s second lunar landing provider, given NASA’s selection goals weighting towards designs that develop tech applicable to later Mars missions.
there is no secret here. this is what happens when you try and do a space program that needs lots of technological development on the cheap. and its why Obama went with ARM ..we could probably have pulled that off on current budgets. there is next to no chance of doing this program on the current money or whatever congress will come up with
On the cheap? NASA has been spending about 3 billion dollars per year since 2006 on SLS/Orion, that’s about 45 billion dollars so far over fifteen years and still no manned capability. Even the Artemis-2 manned mission is just a test flight, and maybe, maybe that might fly by 2024!
Leftover Shuttle Shuttle components, and Apollo/ATV level technology is hardly ‘lots of technological development’. Building the damned things seemed beyond NASA, the technology wasn’t the problem at all.
Between Obama and Senator Nelson (and the other Congressional dinosaurs) in 2010, the legacy policies that NASA was saddled with have been a disaster for NASA. Even now, both the ISS and Project Artemis are only creaking along because of the cost-efficient support provided by SpaceX.
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it is all in the eye of the beholder I guess. Saturn V would cost about 80=90 billion to develop in today dollars…SLS has gone for 20-25 and it was a major redesign of the ET and is probably bullet proof. Orion is in a different class than the Apollo CM and we could go over figures for its development. the SM on Orion is not much but they had to cut costs somewhere and Orion is quite heavy because its a far more capable vehicle than the Apollo CM was
I dont like SLS and orion but as a jerk once said “it is what it is” and we are there. Its like Webb…no one talks about the cost now.
SpaceX lunar lander is on the cheap because Musk ate a lot of its cost…but really it is more in the tens of billions category…like most projects of its type…and who knows how long its going to take them to get it working
there is no real financial support (or political) for a lunar landing…but whatever and however it is done with a level of risk that everyone is mildly happy with…its going to cost a lot of money
Donald Bren donated 100 million for Space Solar Power research. Not invested, donated. Europe, China, the Air Force, the Navy, they are all looking at it as the future. And the Moon is the place to build that cislunar power infrastructure. A recent study showed that while a much larger initial investment, building Space Solar Power components in lunar factories would power our entire civilization faster and at far less cost than building and launching them from Earth. Global utilities are a 6 trillion dollar a year market. Climate Change is going to be a catastrophe and wreck the planet if action is not taken. I believe a sea change is coming.
Of course the spacex fanboys smirk and parrot rocket jesus;
“the stupidest idea ever.”
good luck with that never hear from it again
I think you will be hearing more and more about it. Get used to it.
“China’s plan to develop the solar power plant was detailed in a peer-reviewed paper published in the journal Chinese Space Science and Technology. In the paper, the project developers revealed that the first launch in 2028 will be a demonstration mission wherein a satellite will be used to beam lasers to fixed locations on Earth and even moving satellites. If the trial is a success, the China National Space Administration (CNSA)– China’s space agency– will launch a scaled-up version of the plant into a geosynchronous orbit of 36,000 km in 2030.”
“According to the project developers, the prototype version of the solar plant would have a power output of 10 kilowatts, whereas the plant launched two years later would produce 10 megawatts for “certain military and civilian users” by 2035. Moreover, Beijing aims to establish a full-fledged plant by 2050 which would produce two gigawatts of electricity.”
“To prepare Europe for future decision making on Space-Based Solar Power, ESA has proposed a preparatory programme for Europe, initially named SOLARIS, for the upcoming ESA Council at Ministerial Level in November 2022.”
“The goal of SOLARIS would be to establish the technical, political and programmatic basis of a decision on a European Space-Based Solar Power development programme by 2025.”
“It would undertake studies and technology developments, in partnership with European industry, to mature the technical feasibility and assess the benefits, implementation options, commercial opportunities and risks of Space-Based Solar Power as a contributor to terrestrial energy decarbonisation.”
“The idea of a space-based solar power plant has intrigued multiple countries as solar panels in outer space receive an uninterrupted supply of sunlight, something which is not possible for plants based on Earth. Countries like the UK and the US are also aiming to harness the power of the sun to meet their energy demands and meet their carbon-neutral target. The UK has even launched the Space Energy Initiative (SEI) proposing the launch of a power plant to space by 2030.“
Remember, it’s a matter of perspective. $45 billion is cheap when you look at other cost plus government contracts. The F-35 cost over $400 billion, with another trillion or so dollars needed to keep it flying…
If I just had a million dollars stolen from me, I’m still going to be seriously unhappy about getting robbed for what pocket money I have left.
Trump robbed you and the rest of us by pouring hundreds of billions of more dollars into billionaire pockets with his tax cuts.
Crying about NASA is hilarious….and transparent.
If they were to find a nice big lava tube then the money would flow. If not for any other reason than to keep the Chinese from moving in. We found ice and that is the only reason we are trying to go back now so it could happen.
no it wont. and there are unlikely to be lava tubes at the south pole
the only reason we are trying to get back now…is the program needs something to do
True, no tubes at the poles but likely elsewhere. Can drive water trucks to the poles and do some exploring with them also since they carry their own shielding- I commented about that a couple times- about having them lower themselves down around a small area the astronauts could explore without being dosed.
As for the program needing something to do….space is the next step for humankind so it is far more than just something to do.
You might be biased toward concentrating on the Gateway since I understand you are involved in a project connected to that. Right?
never going to happen.
Maybe …a group I am with is proposing a 6 inch reflector and a HF antenna for Jupiter studies. its a hobby thing. we got some SBIR money to work through the receiver and build a test tube think we found some pointing gears that seem to be space qualified. its “in work”
Never say never. I am certainly interested in Callisto as the second destination after Ceres for human missions. Outside those nasty radiation belts and it might have an ocean even though no tidal heating. Like Ceres.
Mars is the “never going to happen”; too much gravity to land easily and no ocean makes it a dead end.
ok but dont count on that anytime this half of this century if this century
I will just have to pray they come up with something to reverse aging then because otherwise I will not make it to the second half. Maybe in 10 or 20 years they will start freezing us Robert. When they revive us……..
The SLS stack looks so ridiculous. With that LES shroud, it’s a chode rocket.
Lol!
Elon almost certainly thinks about trading horses for favors when he sees it.
That is a lovely and apparently very accurate animation that ESA provided of the Artemis-1 flight. Every tiny flutter of the solar panels, at every important part of the flight represented.
In the video it looks like a single Distant-Retrograde-Orbit of the Moon, before the Trans-Earth-Injection burn.
However…
Okay. Then judging by the NASA diagram, a single DRO has a period of 6 days per orbit? So from one to four Distant-Retrograde-Orbits of the Moon.
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