Update (August 15, 2022): after the two rounds of wet tests, in April and June 2022, the SLS and Orion have returned to the Vehicle Assembly Building, have been prepared, and will leave tomorrow (August 16, 2022) for the pad, for launch on August 29. The rocket’s movement to the platform begins on the 16th, at 17:00 EST, and the live broadcast begins at 16:00 EST in the Kennedy Space Center YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/kscnewsroom
https://blogs.nasa.gov/artemis/2022/08/15/artemis-i-moon-rocket-ready-to-roll-to-the-launch-pad
The human return to the Moon is near! Today (March 17, 2022), the first SLS rocket carrying an Orion capsule will berolled out from its assembly site (the Vehicle Assembly Building, VAB, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center) to Launch Complex 39B (LC-39B). There, tests will be carried out with the vehicle complete and loaded with propellants, starting on April 1. After the tests, it will be taken back to the VAB for removal of the test equipment and final preparation for the launch of the Artemis I mission around May 2022.
This is the first article in what should be a long series on the Artemis Program, as there will be dozens of missions over the decades. See also our article on the SLS rocket:
Officially established as the Artemis Program in 2017, it will take the first people to the Moon since Apollo 17 in 1972. Unlike the Apollo missions, which were short trips with just two astronauts making quick visits to the Moon’s surface, Artemis is much more ambitious: the proposal currently has 11 Artemis missions, with trips lasting from 10 to 60 days, including the construction of a space station orbiting the Moon (Lunar Gateway, starting with Artemis III) and a base on the Moon’s surface, near the south pole, which would be visited repeatedly by astronauts from the Gateway, starting with Artemis VII. The first mission, which should be launched around May 2022, will be an unmanned test of all the equipment, the first flight of the SLS rocket and with the Orion capsule going to the Moon and back. All missions from Artemis II onwards will be manned, with landings on the Moon from Artemis III onwards.
What is the goal of the Artemis Program?
This prolonged human presence and repeated trips to the Moon will make it possible to develop and test the technologies needed to establish a permanent base on the Moon and for more distant and longer journeys, such as to Mars. This includes partially or completely reusable spacecraft for flights between the Moon’s orbit and the surface, refueling spacecraft in space, the use of resources (minerals and water) from the Moon’s surface, energy generation by nuclear power plants, communications and growing plants. It will also test the system of contracting out various elements of the Artemis missions and several of the 24 support missions (not Artemis) to private companies (in addition to those that are international collaborations), which would develop their own means of delivering cargo to the Moon’s orbit or surface – both scientific support missions and crew supplies. There was a long evolution of the objectives over the decades: in 1950-1960 the objective was simply to reach space; in the 1960s, it was to reach the Moon; in 1970-2020 it was to maintain a prolonged human presence in space, in low Earth orbit, to develop technologies and procedures to keep humans alive and healthy in space. Now, the Artemis Program is the first step towards going further, establishing a human presence in places from which it is not possible to escape immediately to Earth in the event of an emergency, nor to count on a rescue mission coming quickly. Going to Mars directly, a journey of years, would be too great a leap (and therefore too risky and costly). The Moon offers an intermediate step, to learn how to keep humans isolated from the Earth for longer and longer periods, outside the radiation protection offered in low orbit by the Earth’s magnetosphere. That’s why this strategy is called “Moon to Mars“.
Why did it take so long to get back to the moon?
Since the time of Apollo, there have been many proposals for other missions to the Moon, with very different scopes. The main problem has always been the same: cost. The entire Apollo Program spent around 200 billion dollars (adjusted for inflation) over more than a decade, with around 400,000 people employed. And the last 3 Apollo missions, for which preparation had already begun, Apollo 18, 19 and 20, were canceled by the government (Congress and he President, who decide what NASA does), due to the high cost and risk, having already had 6 successful landings on the Moon between Apollo 11 and 17 (13 had to return without landing on the Moon, due to an explosion on the way). The 1960s saw a conjunction of many political factors, including the Cold War and the Space Race with the Soviet Union, which was necessary to make a project of this magnitude of cost, innovation and risk possible.
After Apollo, the focus of the American manned program became low Earth orbit, with the Skylab space station (1973-1979) the Space Shuttle, which made 135 flights from 1981 to 2011 and the construction of the International Space Station, from 1998 to 2011 and the operation of the Space Station, which is expected to continue until around 2030. With the end of the Space Shuttle operation and the construction of the Space Station, there was room for more focus on new manned missions beyond low Earth orbit. With improvements in technology and through the reuse of elements from the Space Shuttle, at this time a new program for manned trips to the Moon and beyond began to become feasible. In 2005, the Constellation program began, which envisaged two new large rockets, Ares I and Ares V, and the Orion capsule, to carry crew on trips to the Moon and beyond. But political factors again hampered these goals and a 2009 analysis indicating that the program did not have enough funding to achieve its objectives led to the cancellation of Constellation, with the announcement in 2010 of the construction of the SLS rocket in place of the Ares I and V and the continuation of the development of the Orion capsule, although it was still vague when and for what missions they would be used. It wasn’t until 2017, with the further development of the SLS and Orion, that it became feasible to establish a more concrete program for trips to the Moon, which is how the Artemis program originated.
What’s the ship like? Orion and SLS
The astronauts will travel in Orion capsules, which follow a similar concept to the Apollo missions:
The Orion spacecraft are larger, especially in terms of internal habitable volume (9m3, compared to 6m3 for the Apollo spacecraft), as computers and control systems now take up much less space. Together with the European Service Module, supplied by the European Space Agency (ESA), they can carry up to 6 astronauts (Apollo carried 3 and the modified version for the Skylab station could carry up to 5).
To carry Orion to the Moon, the new super heavy lift rocket developed by NASA, the Space Launch System (SLS), will be used. The SLS will be one of the largest rockets in history (we won’t discuss where it stands in a ranking, as there are different metrics that lead to different results and this difference is not relevant here). The concept was developed in 2010 to enable NASA missions beyond low Earth orbit – manned missions to the Moon and Mars and large unmanned interplanetary vehicles. Making use of technology developed for the Space Shuttle program, including reusing many elements that have already flown with the Space Shuttles, the SLS closely resembles the appearance of the Space Shuttle stack, without the Space Shuttle attached to the side.
In this image, which shows Orion and the European Service Module, it is not obvious that they are on top of the SLS rocket, due to the platforms that surround the rocket to give access during installation and testing. Now that the platforms have been removed it is possible to see the complete assembly:
Find out more about the SLS in our article on it:
Lunar Gateway and lunar bases
But the biggest difference in capability between Artemis and Apollo is not in the capsule or what is carried on a rocket flight. It lies in the use of multiple missions, only some of which are Artemis / SLS, to carry equipment to remain in orbit and on the surface of the Moon: the Lunar Gateway space station, orbiting the Moon, and the various modules to be left on the surface, forming the lunar base. In this way, the Orion capsule will only be a small transport for the crew to reach much larger and more capable facilities on the Moon – just as the current capsules used to go to the International Space Station (Soyuz, Dragon and Starliner) are only small transports to take the crew to the facility that is their destination.
In this way, the astronauts will arrive at the Gateway using the Orion capsule. The Gateway will have living and working space, supplies for the astronauts and will be the platform where the vehicle that will take them to the surface of the Moon, the Human Landing System (HLS), will dock. With the HLS, which should be at least partially reusable, astronauts will be able to descend to the base to be built on the Moon’s surface.
Initially, the elements of the base will be a large fixed habitable module, the Foundational Surface Habitat, a large mobile habitable module, the Mobile Habitat and various support equipment, including unmanned rovers to explore the region remotely, an open vehicle to carry the exposed astronauts (unlike the Mobile Habitat, which will be pressurized), a nuclear power plant, communications equipment and other scientific experiments. So, unlike the Apollo missions, Artemis won’t have to carry all the equipment on each trip. There will be a site in orbit and a site on the surface where facilities and more equipment will be accumulated, gradually growing with each new Artemis mission and unmanned support mission delivering cargo. Just as the International Space Station has gradually grown into a large permanent facility, containing much more habitable space and equipment than it is possible to carry on individual flights that have to take everything at once.
Artemis I
As Artemis I will use the new SLS rocket and the European Service Module for the first time, it will be a complete unmanned mission to the Moon’s orbit, remaining there for 0.5 to 1.5 orbits, returning with Orion and the service module and Orion re-entering and landing on Earth after 26 to 42 days. This will make it possible to test all the elements that will be used in the first manned mission, Artemis II.
As part of the tests, Orion will carry experiments to measure the amount of radiation reaching the inside of the capsule and a new vest to be used for radiation protection (AstroRad), using two mannequins equipped with internal sensors in the positions of the most sensitive vital organs – one mannequin with AstroRad, the other without, to check the difference. In addition to the cargo inside Orion, Artemis I will also carry 10 cubesats with a variety of experiments from different institutions around the world:
- ArgoMoon (Argotec / Italian Space Agency – ASI): inspecting the exterior of the spacecraft.
- BioSentinel (NASA Ames): carrying fungi to examine the effect of radiation on long stays beyond low Earth orbit.
- CuSP (Southwest Research Institute): test for a space weather monitoring system (flow of radiation and particles from the solar wind).
- EQUULEUS (Japan Space Exploration Agency – JAXA / University of Tokyo): mapping the radiation environment around the Earth and testing low-thrust maneuvers on trajectories to the Moon.
- Lunar IceCube (Morehead State University): mapping water ice on the Moon’s surface from a low orbit.
- LunaH-Map (Arizona State University): mapping the distribution of hydrogen compounds (such as water) from the Moon’s orbit.
- Near-Earth Asteroid Scout (NASA – Marshall, JPL, Johnson, Goddard and Langley centers): The first attempt to use a solar sail as propulsion, it will observe a small asteroid passing close to Earth (NEA – Near Earth Asteroid), as well as demonstrating the technology of a low-cost solar sail mission. The current target asteroid, 2020, is comparable in size (18 m in diameter) to the probe’s solar sail (14 m).
- OMOTENASHI (JAXA): a small probe to land on the Moon and monitor radiation in this environment.
- LunIR (Lockheed Martin): demonstration of technology for infrared observation of the Moon on a low-cost platform.
- Team Miles (Fluid and Reason): Demonstration of a low-cost platform with navigation, ion propulsion and communication systems in deep space.
Find out more at
Our article on the SLS rocket:
Our article on Artemis I
Our article on the first two launch attempts and what a scrub means:
Our article on the choice of the second HLS spacecraft for the Moon landing:
Live broadcast of the transportation of the rocket to the launch complex (starting March 17, 15:00 EST):
Official website: https://www.nasa.gov/specials/artemis/
Artemis’ official blog: https://blogs.nasa.gov/artemis/
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