Artemis 1 will use the new NASA Space launch system (SLS) megarocket to send an Orion capsule on an unmanned journey around the moon. The agency plans to launch the mission this summer and has conducted a series of critical tests on Pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida (KSC) to help prepare the team and equipment. This test campaign, called a “wet dress rehearsal,” began on April 1 and was supposed to be completed two days later with the SLS power supply and some launch measurements. But enough technical issues are hampered and delayed the wet dress and the Artemis 1 team then decided to halt work to host the launch of the SpaceX private jet on April 8 Ax-1 astronaut mission from KSC’s Pad 39A. The team was scheduled to continue testing on April 11, but discovered a faulty valve in the cell phone launch tower that supports the Artemis 1 stack. This problem pushed things back one day and caused the team to modify the test procedure; decided to feed only the basic stage of the SLS, not its upper stage. The feeding started on April 14, but the team members stopped the process after noticing that the liquid hydrogen was leaking unexpectedly. (Liquid hydrogen is one of the two propellants used by SLS, along with liquid oxygen.) So the Artemis 1 team stopped this effort, the third attempt overall to fill the SLS tanks. (The previous two came on April 3 and April 4.) But the team plans to return to the horse soon. “We reserve the option to repeat the wet dress as early as next week,” said Mike Sarafin, director of the Artemis mission to NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C., during a press conference on Friday (April 15th). “Thursday 21 is the first time the team feels comfortable doing this.” However, the program is a bit difficult next week, as Sarafin and other NASA officials acknowledged. SpaceX is getting ready launch of the Crew-4 astronaut mission for NASA at 5:26 p.m. EDT (0926 GMT) on April 23 from Pad 39A at KSC. NASA and SpaceX want a 24-hour buffer between the wet Artemis 1 dress and the Crew-4 take off, officials said during a separate news conference on Friday. Thus, if the reservoir of the SLS main stage cannot be completed by the early morning hours of 22 April, the Artemis 1 team will have to wait until the Crew-4 has disembarked from the ground. No decision has been made on this, NASA officials said. The members of the Artemis 1 team continue to analyze data from the testing procedures carried out to date and formulate their next steps. But the SLS and Orion of Artemis 1 remain in good condition, they stressed. And they are hardly afraid of the issues that have arisen. The SLS has never flown before, so it’s no surprise that you run into some problems during the test campaign. For example, it took five or six tank attempts to get it space bus ready for its first flight in 1981, said Artemis launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson of NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems program at KSC. “I would say we are in the family of our past experience for the first time [operations]Said Blackwell-Thompson during Friday’s press conference at Artemis 1. Mike Wall is the author of “Out there“(Grand Central Publishing, 2018, illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for extraterrestrial life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or up Facebook.
