If all goes well, four NASA astronauts will blast off aboard an Alabama built rocket Wednesday evening, on the first crewed mission around the moon since 1972. Artemis-2 will begin with liftoff aboard the so called “Space Launch System” rocket that’s designed, built, tested, and managed at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville.
APR news spoke with retired Apollo engineer Craig Sumner of Huntsville. NASA called him back to consult with the new generation of rocket engineers as they built Artemis. Sumner built the lunar rover dune buggies used during Apollo 15, 16, and 17. He later managed the propulsion systems of the space shuttle at Marshall. Artemis is a direct descendant of the retired space plane.
NASA used technology from the space shuttle program to build its new moon rocket. The “SLS” uses modified versions of the RS-25 liquid fueled engines that powered the shuttle. The new lunar rocket is fitted with four of the motors, as opposed to the three that helped propel the space plane. The Space Launch System is also equipped with longer versions of the shuttle’s solid rocket boosters and the external fuel tank that gives the SLS it’s orange colored central stage.
“I do think that we've tried to take assets that we could get our hands on and cheaply design a new vehicle.” Sumner observed. “I had 535,000 gallons (in the shuttle’s external fuel tank,) SLS has got 700,000. The solid rocket motors (on SLS) have an extra segment that burn 1.5 seconds or less to give us the thrust we need to get to low Earth orbit.”
APR news will spotlight Sumner’s contributions to the upcoming mission of Artemis-2 later this week on “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered.”
For the second time this year, NASA moved its moon rocket from the hangar out toward the pad Friday in hopes of launching four astronauts on a lunar fly-around next month.
If the latest repairs work and everything else goes NASA's way, the Space Launch System could blast off as early as April 1 from Florida's Kennedy Space Center. The Artemis II crew went into quarantine this week in Houston. The 322-foot rocket began the slow 4-mile trek in the middle of the night, transported atop a massive crawler used since the 1960s Apollo era. The trip was held up for several hours by high wind but completed by midday, 11 hours after it began.
The three Americans and one Canadian will zip around the moon in their capsule and then come straight home without stopping. Their mission should have been completed by now, but hydrogen fuel leaks and clogged helium lines forced two months of delay. While technicians plugged the leaks at the pad, the helium issue could only be fixed in the Vehicle Assembly Building, forcing NASA to roll the rocket back at the end of February.
The last time NASA sent astronauts to the moon was during Apollo 17 in 1972. The new Artemis program aims for a two-person landing in 2028. The space agency outlined a new plan for a moon base and the constant presence of astronauts on the lunar surface. This project would include both the Alabama built Space Launch System rocket, and spacecraft from private industry.
