In a major milestone for NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS), all four RS-25 engines – veterans of the Space Shuttle Program (SSP) – have been installed into the core stage of the rocket that will conduct the maiden flight of NASA’s new monster rocket on the Artemis-1 mission.SLS will use the full inventory of flight-proven Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSMEs), or RS-25Ds, before exhausting the stock and moving to the RS-25E.
Engineers and technicians at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans have structurally mated the first of four RS-25 engines to the core stage for NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket that will help power the first Artemis mission to the Moon.Integration of the RS-25 engines to the recently completed core stage structure is a collaborative, multistep process for NASA and its partners Boeing, the core stage lead contractor, and Aerojet Rocketdyne, the RS-25 engines lead contractor. To complete the installation, the technicians will now integrate the propulsion and electrical systems.The installation process will be repeated for each of the four RS-25 engines. The four RS-25 engines used for Artemis I were delivered to Michoud from Aerojet Rocketdyne’s facility at NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, in June.
The director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center said March 5 that the agency is “reassessing” the 2020 launch date for the first flight of its Space Launch System, suggesting that the mission may face further delays.During a question-and-answer session at a Space Transportation Association luncheon here, Jody Singer said the launch readiness date for Exploration Mission (EM) 1 is still in 2020, but did not give a more precise estimate of the date even as NASA reviews possible changes to it.“We do know that we are reassessing those dates to see if that date will work, based on making sure we have the vehicle ready, and ready to go fly safely,” she said. “We are assessing that date. Our launch readiness date is still 2020, and we’re doing everything within our power to make sure that we support that.”Singer didn’t identify the specific issues with EM-1 that prompted the reassessment, but NASA officials have previously said that the core stage of the SLS, along with the European-built service module for the Orion spacecraft that SLS will launch, were the items on the critical path for the mission.
The powerhouse that will help NASA’s Orion spacecraft venture beyond the Moon is stateside. The European-built service module that will propel, power and cool during Orion flight to the Moon on Exploration Mission-1 arrived from Germany at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Tuesday to begin final outfitting, integration and testing with the crew module and other Orion elements.The service module is integral to human missions to the Moon and Mars. After Orion launches on top of the agency’s Space Launch System rocket, the service module will be responsible for in-space maneuvering throughout the mission, including course corrections. The service module will also provide the powerful burns to insert Orion into lunar orbit and again to get out of lunar orbit and return to Earth. It is provided by ESA (European Space Agency) and built by ESA’s prime contractor Airbus of Bremen, Germany. NASA’s prime contractor for Orion, Lockheed Martin, built the crew module and other elements of the spacecraft.
NASA has started updating plans and schedules for additional SLS Block 1 launches in the early 2020s after Washington added federal budget money for a second Mobile Launcher (ML) platform and umbilical tower in late March.Construction of a new Mobile Launcher frees the first ML from a three-year long downtime for teardown and reassembly after the first SLS launch of Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1), currently projected for mid-2020. Instead of being retired after one launch, the Block 1 configuration could fly multiple times.The first two candidates to fly on the second SLS launch are the first crewed Orion on a Lunar swingby flight test or the Europa Clipper interplanetary flagship that will repeatedly overfly Jupiter’s moon exploring for signs of habitability. The space agency formally re-assigned both missions to Block 1 last week and will decide in the future which one gets priority.Both missions will need Block 1’s Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS), a modified Delta 4 upper stage, and NASA is now looking at purchasing more stages and human-rating the design for Orion missions.
Airbus Defence and Space is in the home stretch of work to ship the first European Service Module (ESM) to its Florida launch site for integration with the rest of the hardware for NASA’s Orion spacecraft. When fully assembled and tested, Orion will be launched on the Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1) test flight to orbit the Moon and return.ESM-1 is now undergoing subsystem functional testing at its Assembly, Integration, and Testing (AIT) facility in Bremen, Germany, following completion of most hardware that can be installed on-site. Also known as Flight Model-1 (FM-1), the module will be flown to the Kennedy Space Center this summer to begin the sequence of steps to put together the full Orion spacecraft.As FM-1 nears completion, Flight Model-2 (FM-2) has joined its sister module in the clean room at Bremen to begin its AIT flow. NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) are also working with prime contractor Airbus on beginning construction of ESM hardware for subsequent modules this summer.
Top NASA human exploration administrators briefed the Human Exploration Operations (HEO) committee of the NASA Advisory Council (NAC) on March 26, providing an update on development, testing, and preparations for the first integrated flight of the Orion crew spacecraft and the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1) is currently expected to launch in 2020.The pacing items for reaching launch readiness, referred to as “critical paths” in the schedule, continue to be construction of the first SLS Core Stage and the first Orion European Service Module (ESM). The agency is targeting the end of 2019 as a target launch date, but both critical path items are running around three months behind that schedule.
While NASA engages spacecraft industry help in studying concepts for design, development, test, and evaluation of the Power Propulsion Element (PPE), it is also studying where the anchor component of the proposed Deep Space Gateway (DSG) would orbit the Moon and how it would get there when launched as a part of Exploration Mission-2 (EM-2).
The early missions of Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the Orion spacecraft will be the first of several missions that travel more than 40,000 miles beyond the moon to demonstrate capabilities in deep space farther than humans have ever traveled, but close enough to return home in days or weeks if needed. With the SLS, Orion, and Exploration Ground Systems programs now past their respective critical design reviews and flight hardware in production for the first integrated mission, NASA is transitioning from design and development to long-term affordability and sustainability in support of the Journey to Mars.
The agency issued a request for information (RFI) inviting industry and NASA centers to provide input that will maximize the long term efficiency and sustainability of production, operations, and maintenance for SLS, Orion, and the supporting ground systems, thereby freeing resources to invest in additional capabilities needed to extend a permanent human presence into deep space. Other required deep space exploration capabilities include habitation, spacewalk activity and docking systems, in-space propulsion, and Mars surface exploration systems, as well as continuous safety improvements.
The first launch of NASA’s Space Launch System heavy-lift rocket remains on schedule for the fall of 2018 despite delays in one key element of the Orion spacecraft it will launch.
Agency officials, speaking at a meeting of the NASA Advisory Council’s human exploration and operations committee July 25 in Cleveland, said they were making good progress overall in the development of the various launch vehicle, spacecraft and ground systems components needed to support the launch of Exploration Mission 1 (EM-1).
“We believe we can still make the launch window of between September and November of 2018, and we’re still working towards that,” Bill Hill, deputy associate administrator for exploration systems development, said at the meeting.
Europa, the icy Jovian moon with a subsurface liquid water ocean heated by tidal forces, presents a tremendous opportunity for scientific exploration and offers tantalizing possibilities for the search for extraterrestrial life. Despite the stark warning issued in Arthur C. Clarke’s 2010: Odyssey Two to “attempt no landing there,” NASA has been working on a dedicated mission to Europa, which now involves a lander, for more than three years.
This mission’s profile has undergone considerable evolution since Congress first allocated money in 2013 to finance it, including a policy mandate to utilize the heavy-lift Space Launch System for launch.
Managers of three key NASA exploration programs said May 10 that they are making good progress towards a first launch of the Space Launch System heavy-lift rocket as soon as September 2018.
Managers of the SLS, Orion, and Ground Systems Development and Operations (GSDO) programs said at a Space Transportation Association luncheon here that while the programs are working towards a first launch of SLS and Orion, called Exploration Mission 1 (EM-1), in November 2018, they believe that they could launch up to two months earlier.
“The agency’s baseline commitment is November of 2018,” said Mike Bolger, manager of the GSDP program. “The September date we’ve talked internally about, and pressed them to see if we can make it by September. It gives us a little margin at the end.”
His comments came after an earlier presentation by Mark Kirasich, the Orion program manager, who discussed preparations for the EM-1 launch, including photos of the pressure vessel of the spacecraft being assembled at the Kennedy Space Center.
“This is the pressure vessel that, about 28 months from now, will be on its way towards the moon and into a distant retrograde orbit around the moon,” he said, a timeframe that corresponds to a September 2018 launch.
DARPA has received authorization to spend $146 million on the next phases of the program, which is enough to select one of the three companies and move forward. It’s not enough to finish the program, so the selected company will need to come up with funds of its own. DARPA hopes to down select by the end of the year.
Boeing, Masten Space Systems and Northrop Grumman are the leads for phase 1 of the program. However, phases 2 and 3 are open to all U.S. aerospace companies. DARPA had an industry day for the project on April 29.
As NASA and its contracted partner agencies press forward toward the debut launch of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket in 2018, the U.S. space agency is beginning to look toward preliminary planning and test objectives for the EM-2 mission of the SLS Program, which is expected to take place sometime in the opening half of the 2020 decade.
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With SLS now legally mandated as the launch vehicle for Europa Clipper, the issue of testing the EUS in-flight prior to EM-2 could be rectified if SLS launches the Europa Clipper mission in 2022 ahead of EM-2.
NASA selected Aerojet Rocketdyne of Sacramento, California, to restart production of the RS-25 engine for the agency’s Space Launch System (SLS), the most powerful rocket in the world, and deliver a certified engine. SLS will use four RS-25 engines to carry the agency’s Orion spacecraft and launch explorers on deep space missions, including to an asteroid placed in lunar orbit and ultimately to Mars.
Part of NASA’s strategy to minimize costs of developing the SLS rocket was to leverage the assets, capabilities, and experience of the Space Shuttle Program, so the first four missions will be flown using 16 existing shuttle engines that have been upgraded.
Under the $1.16 billion contract, Aerojet Rocketdyne will modernize the space shuttle heritage engine to make it more affordable and expendable for SLS. The contract runs November 2015 and continues through Sept. 30, 2024.
The new RS-25 engine developed under this contract will have fewer parts and welds and will be certified to a higher operational thrust level. The new engine benefits from improvements in materials and manufacturing techniques such as five-axis milling machines, 3-D manufacturing and digital X-rays.
U.S. space exploration planners say the next big piece of human hardware needed on the road to Mars is a modular habitat that could be stationed near the Moon and visited by early manned Orion capsule missions, building on ground- and space station-testing of “Mars-ready” habitation systems already in development
In a new report, NASA says the first flight of a habitation module could come as early as the first manned flight of the Orion capsule. The agency recently committed to a 2023 launch date for that mission, saying it didn’t have sufficient confidence to endorse the 2021 date still targeted by the Orion development program.
“Co-manifested payloads, potentially launched as early as Exploration Mission 2 (EM-2), could include pressurized modules that extend the deep-space capabilities of the Orion spacecraft and help develop a deep-space habitation capability,” the agency states in “NASA’s Journey to Mars; Pioneering Next Steps in Space Exploration,” a report the agency drafted to answer congressional demands for more detail on its human-exploration plans.
Top agency managers already are discussing an early flight test of a habitation module that could be evolved and expanded to support a crew on its way to Mars. The module would be launched on the same heavy-lift Space Launch System (SLS) under development for eventual use in Mars exploration.
“We want to take it on a shakedown cruise and put it around the Moon,” Associate Administrator Robert Lightfoot told a Capitol Hill audience Oct. 7 that included Administrator Charles Bolden and Deputy Administrator Dava Newman. “And then we’ll have the systems in it that are designed for the longer-term duration, not designed for just being at the Moon, but to give us a chance to test those. We’ll do that on the backbone of the Space Launch System and Orion.”
As NASA continues to develop their plans for delivering humans to the Martian system in the 2030s, a Technical Interchange Meeting has outlined two potential hardware launch sequence options for NASA’s upcoming heavy lift rocket, SLS, that would enable the space agency to utilize SLS’s capabilities while realizing human exploration of Mars.
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A Phobos mission in 2033 assumes the introduction of the SLS Block 2B variant of the Heavy Lift Vehicle in 2028, with an annual flight rate of one to two launches.
The two Phobos dedicated flights of SLS in 2028 would take the Phobos Hab and Phobos Exploration Vehicle (PEV) elements to Cis-lunar space as well as the SEP for the Hab module.
This would be followed by two SLS flights in 2029 bringing the Trans-Earth Injection (TEI) stage (and its SEP) to Cis-lunar space as well as the second flight, which would bring up a crew to perform final check outs of the Phobos Hab module.
The year 2030 would then see the launch of the Earth Orbit Insertion (EOI) stage and taxi elements (with their SEP elements).
At this point, all the launched hardware would then depart Cis-lunar space and be pre-deployed to Mars.
In 2031, the Mars Transit Hab (or Deep Space Hab) would be launched, followed in
2032 by the launches of the Mars Orbit Insertion (MOI) and Trans-Mars Injection (TMI) stages in two separate SLS missions.
The launch of the first Phobos crew to the Transit Hab would take place in 2033.
Assuming a full duration, approximately 500 day mission, the final SLS launch needed for the human Phobos mission would occur in 2035, when an SLS rocket would launch and Orion crew capsule to retrieve the Phobos crew following their return to Cis-lunar space.
In all, this campaign would see the SLS deliver a total mass of 394.5t to Cis-lunar space.
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Build up for the first human Mars mission would commence in 2033 with the launch of an SLS mission to deliver the TEI stage to Cis-lunar space.
This would be followed in 2034 by the launch of the first two Mars Surface Landers on two separate SLS missions.
The year 2035 would then see two more SLS missions, with the launches of the third and fourth Mars Surface Landers.
This would be followed in 2036 with the launch of the fifth and final Mars Surface Lander.
With the launch of the fifth lander, all pre-deployment payloads for the first human Mars mission will have been launched.
The year 2036 would then see the launch of the EOI stage before the 2037 launches of the MOI and TMI stages on two separate SLS launches.
In 2038, a crewed mission of Orion and SLS would bring a check out crew on a restock mission to the Mars Transit Habitat — which would have returned to Cis-lunar space in late 2035 from the human Phobos mission.
If those checkouts and restocks are successful, the first crew for Mars would then launch in 2039 to the Mars Transit Habitat before departing Cis-lunar space for Mars.
Assuming a nominal mission, a single SLS flight would be needed in 2042 to launch an Orion capsule to retrieve the first Mars crew and their cargo following their return to Cis-lunar space.
For the first human mission to Mars, SLS’s launch campaign will see it deliver 630.7t of mass to Cis-lunar space.
The first flight of NASA’s Orion spacecraft with people on board could be delayed by more than a year to early 2023, agency officials said Sept. 16.
NASA announced that the Orion program had achieved a milestone known as Key Decision Point C (KDP-C), completing a technical and programmatic review of the spacecraft designed to carry astronauts beyond Earth orbit. That review was similar to one completed by Orion’s launch vehicle, the Space Launch System, in August 2014.
The KDP-C review found that there is a 70-percent chance Orion will be ready for its first crewed mission, Exploration Mission 2 (EM-2), no later than April 2023. The review also set a cost baseline for Orion from October 2015 through EM-2 of $6.77 billion. That figure excludes the funding spent on Orion to date, including several billion dollars during the Constellation program prior to its 2010 cancellation.
The April 2023 date is a delay of more than 18 months from the earlier target date of August 2021. NASA is keeping that 2021 date as an “aggressive” internal goal for that mission, even while acknowledging the chance of being ready to fly then is low.
NASA just announced an 11-month delay in the first Space Launch System flight from December 2017 to November 2018 in the fourth paragraph of a press release.
This decision comes after a thorough review known as Key Decision Point C (KDP-C), which provides a development cost baseline for the 70-metric ton version of the SLS of $7.021 billion from February 2014 through the first launch and a launch readiness schedule based on an initial SLS flight no later than November 2018.
The full press release is below.
