Artemis (NASA moon mission)

NASA released a new video about the mission.

It looks like they're planning to send women this time. That'll make it a kind of first.

 
Puppycow said:
NASA released a new video about the mission.

It looks like they're planning to send women this time. That'll make it a kind of first.

Click to expand...

More than a small problem with Artemis is how deeply involved Boeing is with the program. It's become clear the issues with Starliner weren't a couple of bugs but systemic failings. Add the 737 MAX and the KC-46 tanker program to the mix and I would not be holding my breath on the SLS flying successfully next year.
 
theprestige said:
I don't understand your objection. The point is a spaceship suitable for long-term human habitation. It can orbit Earth, Moon, Mars, Venus, the Sun... Etc. with equal facility. Obvious early stages of development will include short-duration testing in LEO, medium-duration testing in translunar and cislunar flights, and long-duration testing in both those regimes.

Sending it to the moon and back means it can contribute to the development of moon-based infrastructure, in addition to developing techniques and knowledge for long-duration missions.

Probably one of the first long-duration test missions will be an extended stay in LEO, where the crew and the craft are easily accessible from Earth if something breaks unexpectedly, or some unforseen crisis occurs.

On top of all that, once you have a spaceship that can orbit the moon, it can also orbit the Earth. It's literally impossible to throw out "orbits the Earth" at that point. Your objection makes no physical sense, unless you're predicting that they're just not going to build a spacecraft capable of leaving LEO, which seems like a really weird prediction.

tl;dr - WTF are you even talking about?
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The Gateway doesn't go to the moon and back and will never be in LEO, it sits in NRHO (Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbit) and waits for you to send things to it. It is also incapable of long-duration missions, it can only support a crew for 30 days. It is located in NRHO because SLS can't get Orion to low Lunar orbit, but placing it there instead of in LEO gives SLS something to do. It's not infrastructure, it's a detour and distraction, and attempt to justify the SLS.
 
jadebox said:
The video explains the Gateway a little better than the Wikipedia article. But, still doesn't go into much detail.

It doesn't seem necessary for the missions to the moon, but I suspect it adds more value than it costs. It would start as just a hub and maybe a communications center to which modules can be later attached. If it later evolved into a real space station, it wouldn't cost much more than the ISS to operate and would provide an enhanced platform for supporting operations on the Moon.

The Gateway will be much more useful in orbit around Mars. For one thing, getting people into orbit around Mars will be much easier than getting them to the surface. Humans in orbit around Mars will be able control multiple rovers and other robotic explorers in near real time. In a few weeks, they would probably be able to explore more of Mars than all of the previous landers combined.

As far as the utility of going back to the moon before going to Mars, it seems obvious to me. Developing and testing the systems in an environment where earth is only a few days away (versus months) and communication is only delayed a few seconds (versus minutes) is one benefit.
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Reaching Mars orbit takes 6-7 km/s more propulsive delta-v than landing on the surface, because you can't take advantage of the atmosphere for braking. Realistically, this means a minimum-energy trajectory that takes around 6 months each way, and of course you're stuck in orbit for the entire duration of the stay there, above the protection of the atmosphere against radiation or meteorites. Spending a couple years total in a deep space high-radiation environment to temporarily get some low latency control of some surface robots is very much not worth the expense and risk.

If you're going to Mars, go in an architecture capable of direct EDL, which we've already used to put much larger payloads on the surface than anything we've put in orbit (even while handicapping ourselves by avoiding supersonic retropropulsion). This also puts surface ice deposits within reach. Producing propellant from those would vastly reduce the amount of mass you need to send to Mars.

The Gateway's not useful for testing anything for such a mission either. Any such testing could be done by launching the actual Mars spacecraft to high Earth orbit, rather than burning resources on a "gateway".

As for staging supplies and such for lunar exploration, the obvious location to do that is on the lunar surface, not on a station in a high lunar orbit that only has launch windows every couple weeks and which requires a multi-stage lander/ascent system to reach. You could reach or return from a secondary landing site anywhere on the surface in a suborbital hop burning a fraction of the propellant required for a trip all the way back to the so-called Gateway, and you could make that hop at any time if an emergency requires it, rather than waiting for the next Gateway window. The Gateway just spreads available resources more thinly and puts everything stored at the Gateway out of easy reach for people on the surface.


Roboramma said:
Couldn't you still send those things separately and have them rendezvous in lunar orbit without Gateway?
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You could, and that is now officially the plan for the 2024 landing, since developing an orbital toll booth didn't fit in the budget or schedule: https://spacenews.com/nasa-takes-gateway-off-the-critical-path-for-2024-lunar-return/

They're still developing it, it's just no longer treated as being required for lunar missions.
 
Puppycow said:
Another video:

Click to expand...

That's a reupload of a video NASA published last December:


The Gateway is no longer part of the plan, the lander (one of these options: https://spacenews.com/nasa-selects-three-companies-for-human-landing-system-awards/) is to dock directly with the Orion rather than both separately docking to the Gateway (see the article linked in my previous post).

Note they haven't canceled the Gateway (yet). They're just no longer pretending that it's needed or even helpful in getting to the moon.
 
cjameshuff said:
That's a reupload of a video NASA published last December:


The Gateway is no longer part of the plan, the lander (one of these options: https://spacenews.com/nasa-selects-three-companies-for-human-landing-system-awards/) is to dock directly with the Orion rather than both separately docking to the Gateway (see the article linked in my previous post).

Note they haven't canceled the Gateway (yet). They're just no longer pretending that it's needed or even helpful in getting to the moon.
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Thanks.
 
So NASA has appointed a replacement for Doug Loverro as chief of Human Spaceflight. Its Kathy Lueders, previously in charge of the Commercial Crew program. Of course this appointment comes a fortnight after Demo-2 launched two astronauts to the ISS. There may also be a political message in the appointment given that Loverro lost his job by bending the rules in trying to get Boeing to come up with a competitive proposal for the HLS and Lueders has helped build the strong working relationship between NASA and SpaceX.

Article on Lueders appointment:

https://spaceflightnow.com/2020/06/12/kathy-lueders-named-nasa-chief-of-human-spaceflight/

And one on Lovarro's dismissal:

https://arstechnica.com/science/202...uman-spaceflight-resigned-and-why-it-matters/
 
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NASA begins assembling the rocket for Artemis moon mission

(CNN)NASA engineers have begun assembling the massive rocket designed to take the first woman to the moon later this decade as part of the Artemis program.
The first booster segment of the Space Launch System (SLS) was stacked on top of the mobile launcher at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida earlier this week in preparation for its maiden flight, NASA said Tuesday.
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Confirms that they do in fact plan to put a woman on the moon in 2024.

The rocket is a key part of NASA's Artemis lunar exploration program, which aims to send the first woman and next man to the Moon by 2024. NASA officials also hope the SLS will be used to reach Mars and other "deep space destinations."
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jadebox said:
The video explains the Gateway a little better than the Wikipedia article. But, still doesn't go into much detail.

It doesn't seem necessary for the missions to the moon, but I suspect it adds more value than it costs. It would start as just a hub and maybe a communications center to which modules can be later attached. If it later evolved into a real space station, it wouldn't cost much more than the ISS to operate and would provide an enhanced platform for supporting operations on the Moon.

The Gateway will be much more useful in orbit around Mars. For one thing, getting people into orbit around Mars will be much easier than getting them to the surface. Humans in orbit around Mars will be able control multiple rovers and other robotic explorers in near real time. In a few weeks, they would probably be able to explore more of Mars than all of the previous landers combined.

As far as the utility of going back to the moon before going to Mars, it seems obvious to me. Developing and testing the systems in an environment where earth is only a few days away (versus months) and communication is only delayed a few seconds (versus minutes) is one benefit.
Click to expand...
Teleoperation makes sense from some Gateway derivative, but for manned missions on the ground a direct approach is better because you can aerobrake. That's the option SpaceX is thinking of for Starship.
 
Orion Space Launch System

Mega Moon Rocket Roll Out For First Time

The combined rocket and spacecraft will move out of the Vehicle Assembly
Building at the NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for testing not
earlier than mid-February 2022. NASA is currently reviewing the exact
date for the move. SLS and Orion will journey to Launch Pad 39B atop
the crawler-transporter-2 in preparation for the agency’s Artemis I mission.
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Has NASA gone Kerbal?


Minimum safe viewing distance? I'll say 10 kilometers.
 
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Well, this is not actually about the moon mission, but it was launched with the Artemis I uncrewed test flight, and besides, this thread needs to be kicked back up to the top, because the Artemis moon mission is interesting to me...

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FROM: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/na...to-chase-tiny-asteroid-after-artemis-i-launch

NASA Solar Sail Mission to Chase Tiny Asteroid After Artemis I Launch
(2022-01-20)

NEA Scout will visit an asteroid estimated to be smaller than a school bus – the smallest asteroid ever to be studied by a spacecraft.

Launching with the Artemis I uncrewed test flight, NASA’s shoebox-size Near-Earth Asteroid Scout will chase down what will become the smallest asteroid ever to be visited by a spacecraft. It will get there by unfurling a solar sail to harness solar radiation for propulsion, making this the agency’s first deep space mission of its kind.

The target is 2020 GE, a near-Earth asteroid (NEA) that is less than 60 feet (18 meters) in size. Asteroids smaller than 330 feet (100 meters) across have never been explored up close before. The spacecraft will use its science camera to get a closer look, measuring the object’s size, shape, rotation, and surface properties while looking for any dust and debris that might surround 2020 GE.

Because the camera has a resolution of less than 4 inches (10 centimeters) per pixel, the mission’s science team will be able to determine whether 2020 GE is solid – like a boulder – or if it’s composed of smaller rocks and dust clumped together like some of its larger asteroid cousins, such as asteroid Bennu.

“Thanks to the discoveries of NEAs by Earth-based observatories, several targets had been identified for NEA Scout, all within the 16-to-100-foot [5-to-30-meter] size range,” said Julie Castillo-Rogez, the mission’s principal science investigator at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “2020 GE represents a class of asteroid that we currently know very little about.”

(SNIP)
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Solitaire said:
Has NASA gone Kerbal?
…
Minimum safe viewing distance? I'll say 10 kilometers.
Click to expand...

If I recall correctly, the fire/rescue staging area is not that much closer than the LCC and press area; something like a kilometer away.

For crew rescue, they now use MRAPs (the mine-resistant trucks first used in Iraq (?). Not, obviously, because of fear of mines/IEDs, but because they are fast, tough, and easy to get the crew into.

One thing that is new (again) is the possibility of a Mode 1 abort from the pad. If everything goes really bad, the abort rocket will yank the crew module away and off for a parachute landing in the ocean, without the crew having to get out and hit the slidewires or be taken away by the fire/rescue crews. Last I remembered, though, this won’t be active for the unmanned launch. Shuttle, obviously, didn’t have this.
 
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