NASA Preps Core Stage of Massive Space Launch System Megarocket for Big
Test
The 212-foot (65 meters) core stage of NASA's new
megarocket, the Space Launch System, rolls out of the Michoud Assembly Building
in New Orleans, Louisiana on Jan. 1, 2020 for transport to the Stennis Space
Center in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi for a critical test.
The core
stage of NASA's new megarocket, the massive Space Launch System (SLS), ready to
leave its New Orleans home for an epic journey culminating in a space
voyage.
The eventual goal of SLS is to ferry astronauts to the moon and
more distant destinations, but first, NASA needs to test out the rocket without
people on board. NASA has said it hopes to run that test flight - called Artemis
1 - by the end of 2020, but officials have said it could slip to 2021. That
flight is expected to have SLS send an Orion spacecraft on a loop from Earth,
around the moon and back to our planet again.
But to get that mission ready, NASA needs to ship the
212-foot (65 meters) SLS core stage from its Michoud Assembly Center in New
Orleans, Louisiana to a test site in at the agency's Stennis Space Center near
Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. The sheer mass and size of the rocket won't easily
allow for conventional overland transport, so the core stage will make its
journey by barge.
NASA and its contractor teams (led by Boeing) carefully
moved the core stage between buildings, to Building 110, at NASA's Michoud
Assembly Facility in New Orleans on Jan. 1. This is to get the core stage ready
for shipping.
Assembly Facility in Louisiana. There it will be readied
for the Pegasus barge and its trip to @NASAStennis. Thank you to the @NASA team
for working through the holidays!"
Another picture released on Jan. 3
showed the core stage sitting bare in a Michoud building after engineers removed
scaffolding from the core stage.
"NASA and the contractor team used the
scaffolding positioned around the 212-foot core stage to assess the stage's
inside and check out the electronic systems distributed throughout the stage,
including avionics and propulsion systems, that will enable the stage to operate
during launch and flight," the agency said in a statement.
Later in
January, the core stage will journey on a Pegasus barge from Michoud to NASA's
Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. The core stage will be
mounted on the B-2 Test Stand to do what NASA calls the "Green Run" test series
- the first full test of the core stage with its flight hardware.
"The
comprehensive test campaign will progressively bring the entire core stage,
including its avionics and engines, to life for the first time to verify the
stage is fit for flight ahead of the launch of Artemis I," NASA
stated.
All SLS rockets will fly to space from the Kennedy Space Center
in Florida. After Artemis I, NASA plans a second test mission with humans on
board in the next couple of years. Then the third mission, Artemis III, is
scheduled to put astronauts on the moon in 2024 - roughly 55 years after
humanity's first moon landing, Apollo 11, in July 1969.
All told, the
core stage is 212 feet tall (65 meters) and includes four engines and two
liquid- propellant tanks. "I'm going to call it the ninth wonder of the world,"
Douglas Loverro, the new head of NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Mission
Directorate, said during the event.
Bridenstine's speech was more about
celebration than announcements, but the discussion left in the air several
concerns that NASA is facing about both the rocket and the larger Artemis
program.
NASA has contracts with Boeing for only the first two SLS
rockets, Bridenstine said, not later iterations of the launcher. But it's the
third rocket in the series that will send astronauts to the moon in 2024 to meet
the agency's much-touted goal.
The agency also continued to avoid
offering a schedule for Artemis flights or a cost estimate for the SLS rockets.
Bridenstine has been demurring on offering a launch date for the uncrewed first
Artemis mission, deferring that question to the new director of human
exploration. Although he called Loverro up to the stage at the event, no date
was announced.
Similarly, NASA has deflected questions about the
anticipated price per rocket of the SLS program. In his comments, Bridenstine
argued that cost will depend on how many rockets NASA ends up commissioning -
the more rockets, the lower the individual price will end up. In October, the
agency expressed interest in as many as 10 SLS rockets for the Artemis program.
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