WASHINGTON – NASA should be able to set the new date for the Artemis 1 launch within a few weeks after the Space Launch system’s core firing test, assuming the test goes as expected.
NASA undertook to conduct the static fire test on March 18 at the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi during a two-hour window between 15 and 17 hours East. The core phase’s four RS-25 engines will stay on fire for up to eight minutes, though officials said last month that after four minutes they would gather all the data they needed for their test objectives.
This test is a repeat of the first Green Run test on January 16, which was stopped after 67 seconds when the hydraulic system in one engine reached “deliberately conservative” limits in its flight software. NASA planned the second test for February 25, but postponed it days in advance due to a problem with a ‘prevalve’ in the nuclear phase that supplies liquid oxygen to the engines.
Steve Jurczyk, acting administrator of NASA, said in an interview on March 17 that preparations for the upcoming test are going well. “The team is ready to go,” he said of Stennis. “As long as the weather isn’t really bad, like lightning or strong winds, we need to be able to turn it off tomorrow.”
If the test does go well, he said the agency will soon have a launch date for the Artemis 1 mission, which will be able to confirm the core phase being tested at Stennis. This mission is expected to be launched in November. “I think they’ll probably look at the schedule again in just a few weeks and confirm if we can make November of this year or that we should go out a bit.”
The margin that NASA had in its schedule for a November launch was largely exhausted, due to delays caused by the pandemic and a series of tropical weather systems that went through near Stennis last summer and fall, as well as technical problems during testing. However, he said the program worked to ‘optimize’ the workflow at the Kennedy Space Center once the core phase arrives there, enabling them to put the schedule together a bit.
“I think in a few weeks we will know if November is possible or if we should have to push it out for a month or two,” he said.
SLS cost reduction study
As NASA prepares for the Green Run test, it begins an investigation into ways to reduce the cost of the SLS program. The internal study, first reported by Ars Technica on March 15, is looking for ‘efficiency and cost-cutting opportunities’ in the various elements of the Artemis program, according to a statement from the agency.
“It really focuses on the transition from development to production and operations and how we become more efficient with production and operations,” Jurczyk said, with a specific focus on SLS and Exploration Ground Systems, which support SLS launches.
In the study, NASA will work with industry to identify requirements that have specific cost and schedule effects, and possibly shift the roles of government and industry. “The goal is to reduce the cost per launch for SLS,” he said, although the agency did not set a specific cost target.
“Nothing is off the table at the moment,” he said. “We want the team to look at everything that makes sense to look at.” He only later said that the study would develop a series of potential cost reductions for SLS.
The new Biden administration did not request the study, Jurczyk said, but rather has its origins in discussions before Jim Bridenstine and Jim Morhard retired in January as administrator and deputy administrator, respectively. ‘We are not counting on very large budget increases, so if we want a reasonable cadence of Artemis missions and the funding to develop the Human Landing System and surface systems, we should try to keep the SLS cost per launch bag. . ”
The goal is to have an interim report ready in July or August, which could potentially give extra work to some concepts. “We want to do this as soon as possible, but also make sure that the things we decide to implement will be effective and that it will reduce costs,” he said.
Europe Clipper SLS Analysis
Another SLS issue recently emerged over the agency’s decision not to use the vehicle to launch the Europa Clipper mission to Jupiter. Language in the 2021 financial year for omnibus spending allowed NASA to use an alternative vehicle for that mission if the SLS vehicle was not available, if a “torque-loading analysis” found that the spacecraft was not compatible with Clipper was not.
In a March 15 statement, Representative Brian Babin (R-Texas), a member of the Space Subcommittee, said he contacted Jurczyk on February 22 and asked for the analysis, but received no response. do not have. “I expect a quick response from NASA to answer our questions about their analyzes of launch vehicles, as well as the cost, schedule and impact of the mission,” he said in the statement.
Jurczyk said there was a delay in the response to Babin because some of the analysis contained proprietary information. NASA was working on a version without its own information “and we will get something about it soon.”
He said the analysis shows that the lateral loads on the spacecraft during the launch on SLS were higher than what the spacecraft was designed for. “Since the design is finished and some of the hardware has already been manufactured, from a cost and schedule point of view, it will be very challenging to change the spacecraft or develop an isolation system to deal with the side-load problem.”
NASA continues plans to select a commercial launch vehicle for Europe Clipper, with a formal request for proposals on March 5. This means that in the foreseeable future, the SLS Manifesto will be exclusively launches of Orion spacecraft on Artemis missions.
Jurczyk said NASA does not abandon the use of SLS for other missions, including the development of a cargo variant. He cites as an example the ongoing work by NASA’s Directorate Science Mission on how SLS can support future missions of extraterrestrial planets. “We are still going to continue to analyze and develop the cargo version,” he said.