NASA Plans Moon Launch in 2022


NASA has set a date Friday for its giant rocket to launch a spacecraft to the moon and back, starting in mid-February next year. No, this time for real.

At a press conference, officials from the space agency announced a two-week deadline, from February 12, for a flight – without astronauts – of the Space Launch System, the agency’s largest rocket in decades. It will lift Orion, a capsule to transport astronauts into deep space, on an uncrewed voyage that orbits the moon and then returns to Earth.

“We’re on track to fly, and this crew will be ready when our flight gear is ready,” said NASA official Mike Sarafin, who is the director of the mission.

Whether NASA will continue with the timeline this February depends on the results of tests on the ground leading up to the launch window, including the January rehearsal of the launch. Authorities also announced an additional two-week flight period in March and April, both without astronauts, based on the moon’s alignment with Earth.

The long-delay flight, called Artemis-1, aims to test the vehicle’s safety. A future flight, Artemis-2, will carry a crew on a similar journey to mirror the 1968 Apollo 8 mission. NASA hopes to carry astronauts back to the lunar surface, including the first woman and the first human of color. , in the coming years.

No human has visited the moon since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. In the years following Apollo, NASA turned its attention to space shuttles and building a space station in low Earth orbit. The agency had no equipment to go further than the planet.

To send humans back to the moon, NASA needs a rocket approaching the power of Saturn V, carrying the Apollo astronauts. In 2011, the Obama administration announced the launch of the Space Launch System, a rocket based on designs from Constellation, a previously scrapped program.

SLS is a rocket beastIt has a launch capacity of 70 metric tons. A modified version of the rocket that would fly in the future would have weighed 130 tons—even more than the Apollo-era launcher. Although Congress has consistently funded the program, flights of the Space Launch System will cost about $2 billion per launch. NASA has spent $10 billion on the rocket so far, plus another $16 billion on the Orion capsule.

But little has gone according to plan when SLS NASA plans its maiden flight for 2017. This goal was not achieved and 2018 audit faulty performance by prime contractor Boeing, which worked on the booster phase of the rocket for most of the missed deadlines. As problems persist, the Covid-19 pandemic has added to delays in the schedule.

In January 2021, the rocket was finally ready for its first major test, the continuous ignition of the engines, which would simulate the stress of an orbital journey. The test was supposed to last eight minutes, but just cut off after about a minute.

Rocket registered on second attempt in March 499.6 seconds of continuous burning of giant engines It sent a huge cloud of steam over the huge test stand in Mississippi. When the test was deemed successful, the agency sent the massive rocket to Kennedy Space Center in Florida to begin flight preparations.

This week, the Orion spacecraft was lifted onto the rocket and docked. Together, they stand 322 feet tall or Higher than the Statue of Liberty and its base.

If a series sticks to its spaceflight schedules, 2022 could be one of the busiest years the moon has ever seen. In addition to Artemis-1, NASA plans to send a small satellite to orbit the moon and a pair of robotic landing craft carrying various special cargoes to the lunar surface. China, Russia, India and South Korea have announced plans for lunar orbits or landings in 2022.

President Trump promised the United States Returning astronauts to the moon by 2024A goal that the Biden administration has not changed. But analysts are skeptical of achieving this ambitious goal, given that most of the hardware has yet to be built, including a spacecraft that will actually land astronauts on the lunar surface.

NASA has signed a contract with SpaceX, the private company founded by Elon Musk, to use the Starship spacecraft as a lunar lander. Starship is still in prototype stage and it has not yet been launched into orbit. Blue Origin, the company founded by Jeff Bezos from Amazon, also filed a lawsuit in federal court regarding the contract, Arguing that NASA unfairly rewarded SpaceX. If a judge sided with Mr. Bezos’ company, it could force NASA to restart and further delay the Moon landing program.



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