The Moon or bust, says NASA, after successful SLS/Orion test flight
- Reference: 1678339928
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/03/09/nasa_sls_rocket_orion_test/
- Source link:
After months of delay due to technical issues and bad weather, the SLS, with the Orion spacecraft onboard, finally took off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida in November 2022.
The mission, dubbed Artemis I, involved flying the SLS into space, releasing Orion and sending it into lunar orbit, and returning the capsule back to Earth to be recovered safely in one piece. Initial analysis of flight data gathered from the mission shows it was successful: the SLS performed better than expected and pulled off a near-perfect trans-lunar injection burn to deliver Orion to the Moon.
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Orion fulfilled 161 test objectives and was more energy efficient than predicted, generating 20 per cent more power than predicted while consuming about 25 per cent less power than expected. All maneuvers – including flying to and from the Moon, returning to Earth, and releasing the parachute for splashdown into the Pacific Ocean – were executed without any major problems.
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There are, however, a few niggling complications. Orion's latching current limiters – which act like circuit breakers to transfer and distribute power from its solar panels – switched open randomly during its flight for unknown reasons. Also, the material covering the heat shield – used to protect the capsule and prevent it and any occupants from incineration as Orion reenters Earth's atmosphere – deteriorated more than NASA thought it would.
Little things like that.
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The mobile launcher part of the SLS also sustained more damage than expected. NASA said its cryogenic fuel lines corroded, while 60 panels and cabinets broke, as did its elevators and blast shields. Officials continue to review hundreds of gigabytes worth of data gathered from the mission.
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Meanwhile NASA is gearing up for the Artemis II mission, which will fly a more powerful version of the SLS rocket – and carry a group of astronauts inside Orion.
"We're learning as much as we possibly can from Artemis I to ensure we fully understand every aspect of our systems and feed those lessons learned into how we plan for and fly crewed missions," [9]said Jim Free, NASA associate administrator for the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, in a prepared statement. "Safely flying crew is our top priority for Artemis II."
Engineers will, for example, modify the mobile launcher for the upcoming Artemis mission. They will build an emergency egress system at the launchpad in case the crew needs to make a last-minute exit from the rocket.
NASA hopes to launch Artemis II in November 2024, and fly the first woman and next man to orbit the Moon. The eventual goal is to land a crew of astronauts on the Moon once again, after humans first set foot on its surface over half a century ago. ®
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[9] https://www.nasa.gov/feature/analysis-confirms-successful-artemis-i-moon-mission-reviews-continue
[10] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: were executed without any major problems
Any landing you can walk away from...
" the Artemis II mission, which will fly a more powerful version of the SLS rocket – and carry a group of astronauts inside Orion."
Surely if astronaut safety is a priority they would fly the modified / more powerful version without occupants first and only fly astronauts on the same stack that has been tested? While to a large extent the components are the same, and the new component will have had it's unit tests, changing any component basically invalidates the previous testing with respect to whether the new component will 'play nice' with the rest of the previously-tested stack. That's what 'integration' or 'system' testing is for.
I wouldn't dream of putting any software into Prod that was a modified version of what's been passed in testing.
Yes, but that would require production, or planning.
And SLS isn't the best way to get to the moon any more... whether it was ever the best way to get to the moon is questionable.
And it does depend on the modification... and the cost of testing.
Viewpoint
@Neil Barnes
It depends on where you sit. If it's a desk then the problems are minor. Otherwise hope that your diaper is leak-proof.
Caining it Moonward
So they indeed blew the bloody doors off while upgoing - nice
Is the heatshield a worry downcoming? Well, "less than expected" can still mean "more than required" The heatshield is still trusty AVCOAT, but the ablative structure's new manufacturing, and assembly process had been modified.
Modifications from known data, means it's one of those 'known, unknown' thingies..They know AVCOAT works, and they know how well it worked in a past configuration (Apollo) The new configuration and process is (was) unknown - they had no data for it, and was therefore (gulp) modelled.
The data returned did not match the model.
What did they do differently? Different bonding, and production line modular manufacture - the Apollo era heatshield was handcrafted and bonded, in a time consuming process. The new configuration worked though, so there is that going for it,
What else? Well, before we decry the modelling for the heatshield performance, we should mention the novel, modelled 'skip entry' - that worked great. It was intended to reduce the stresses of downcoming, including heat stress; so I'm wondering if the "less than expected" relates more to the modelling of reduced heat, and stress with a skip-entry, than to the performance of the ablative heatshield.
The Artrmis mission remember, was coming in hot - damn, hot, real hot! Hotter than a hot thing on planet Hot. Beyond known heat stress data is what I'm getting at.
So, despite the discrepancies in modelled data, and expected performance, both the skip-entry and ablative shield was well done - no astronauts would have been well done, or skited into the black and well gone.
Still an horrrendous waste of money,
Re: Caining it Moonward
"The Artrmis mission remember, was coming in hot - damn, hot, real hot! Hotter than a hot thing on planet Hot. Beyond known heat stress data is what I'm getting at."
Well, entry velocity was 24,581 mph for Artemis 1 vs 24,816 mph for Apollo 10 - that means Apollo had ~2% more energy to deal with per unit mass.
Artemis is only ~10% more massive ~20t -> ~22.5t (i.e. 10% more energy)
Apollo was only 80% the diameter (4m vs 5m), so presumably loads on the heat shield would be 50% more? (not run the physics on this one)
Basically it's within reasonable bounds of heat loads we dealt with 50 years ago.
were executed without any major problems
So the power feeds dropping out and the heat shield protection dropping off were _minor_ problems?