NASA plans to send Artemis astronauts to the Moon in April for the first time in 50 years
Kyiv • UNN
The Artemis II mission with four astronauts is scheduled for April 1 after the rocket's repairs are completed. NASA estimates the chances of success for the new system at 50 percent.
NASA on Thursday approved the launch of its rocket to the Moon in April with four astronauts after completing the final stage of repairs, UNN reports with reference to AP.
Details
The 98-meter rocket will be rolled out from the hangar back to the launch pad next week at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA, allowing for a launch attempt as early as April 1. This will be humanity's first flight to the Moon in over 50 years.
The "Artemis II" crew was supposed to orbit the Moon earlier this year, but a fuel leak and other issues with the launch vehicle prevented it.
Although NASA managed to fix a hydrogen fuel leak at the launch pad in February, a helium flow problem forced the space agency to return the rocket to the Vehicle Assembly Building for repairs, pushing the mission to April.
The space agency has only six days in early April for the launch, after which the mission will be postponed until April 30 - early May. "This is a test flight, and it is not without risk, but our team and our equipment are ready," Lori Glaze of NASA told reporters at the end of a two-day flight readiness review.
Glaze and other NASA officials declined to specify the probability of risk for the upcoming mission.
History shows that a new rocket essentially has a 50% chance of success, said John Honeycutt, head of the mission management team.
So much time has passed since the SLS's only previous flight - more than three years ago without a crew - that it's difficult to make sense of any risk assessment figures, Honeycutt said.
"This is not the first flight," Glaze said. "But we are also not operating in a regular mode. So we definitely have significantly more risks than a system that flies constantly."
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Late last month, new NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced a major reorganization of the "Artemis" program to accelerate processes and thus reduce risks. Dissatisfied with the slow pace and long breaks between lunar missions, he added an additional training flight in Earth orbit next year. This is now the new "Artemis III," and the landing of two astronauts on the Moon has been moved to "Artemis IV." Isaacman plans one, and possibly two, lunar landings in 2028.
The NASA Office of Inspector General warned this week during an audit that the space agency needs to develop a plan to rescue its lunar crews. According to the report, landing near the Moon's south pole will be riskier than for Apollo astronauts closer to the equator due to the complex polar terrain.
The report named lunar landers as the primary cause of potential crew fatalities during the first few lunar landings under the Artemis program. It cited a crew fatality threshold for the space agency of 1 in 40 for lunar operations and 1 in 30 for Artemis missions overall.
Elon Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, which received a contract from NASA to supply lunar landers for astronauts, have accelerated their work to meet the new target date of 2028. The Office of Inspector General stated that many technical challenges remain, including refueling the landers in Earth orbit before flying to the Moon.
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NASA sent 24 astronauts to the Moon as part of the Apollo program, 12 of whom successfully landed. All lunar missions, except for one - Apollo 13 - achieved their main goals. The program ended with the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.