Artemis 1: Moon, do you remember us?
We are coming back!
The journey to the moon is surely the most extreme journey ever undertaken by a human
being.
And it is amazing to think how the astronauts of the Apollo generation managed to get as
far as our satellite several times aboard spacecraft whose computers had the computing
capacity of an old cell phone Yet, despite the technological limitations
of the time, those men managed to prove the feasibility of a journey many thought impossible.
Today, more than fifty years later, with Artemis I, we are attempting to repeat this incredible
crossing, with an initial launch that will serve primarily to demonstrate the launcher's
ability to get to and from the Moon safely, even dropping small CubeSats for scientific
purposes into lunar orbit.
It will also be crucial to test the behavior of the new Orion command module, one of the
flagships of this program, which promises a great deal of autonomy and structural integrity
even in emergency situations, being able to ensure the survival of its passengers in critical
situations to a safe landing.
But all these would be empty words of meaning if today, November 16, 2022, NASA's new and
much-discussed super rocket did not finally get off the ground, leaving behind all the
doubts and fears that had accompanied the continuous postponements of recent months.
What follows is a chronicle of what happened in those exciting hours, when much of the
world was still immersed in sleep, unaware that at that moment the doors to the future
were finally opening wide.
That's right, dear friends...
In front of thousands of people gathered since the night before, at Cape Canaveral, the Artemis
I mission finally lifted off from Ramp 39b at Kennedy Space Center at 1:47 a.m. local
time on Wednesday, Nov. 16.
At that moment, the four Rs-25 engines (very reliable, since they were literally ripped
from the old Space Shuttle carcasses) and the two solid-propellant boosters pushed upward
the 2,700 tons of the Space Launch System (or SLS), NASA's new 98-meter-tall carrier
rocket.
And with it, right at the top, the Orion, the new capsule that in future launches will
be destined to house a crew of four astronauts.
A kind of curse But before we go on with the launch report,
let's take a step back to summarize the whole incredible chain of adverse circumstances
that delayed the start of this amazing undertaking by two and a half months...
You will undoubtedly recall that last August 29, NASA had to abort the launch of Artemis
1 because of a problem in the rocket's first-stage refueling system; an inconvenience that then
recurred on September 3, when a new start was attempted, without success.
Thus it became necessary, in order not to leave it exposed to the elements, to move
the Space Launch System from the launch pad to the Vehicle Assembly Building, the large
building where the rocket is assembled and configured.
After some maintenance activities, the rocket was brought back to the launch pad last Nov.
4, and -as if that were not enough- in the following days it had to contend with strong
winds from Nicole, the tropical storm that was sweeping across Florida and part of the
southeastern United States.
Bringing the rocket back to the Vehicle Assembly Building would have meant the further postponement
of the launch, which is why NASA engineers chose not to change plans, even though they
were aware that they faced some additional risks related to the difficult weather conditions.
Once the storm passed, NASA postponed the launch for a couple of days from Nov. 14 to
Nov. 16, and then conducted the necessary checks to ensure that the rocket and all systems
had not been damaged.
When the checks were completed earlier this week, space agency officials finally gave
their go-ahead to continue with the necessary procedures to prepare for launch.
The checks, in fact, led to the identification of some minor damage, but not such as to affect
the functionality of the rocket and the safety of the launch in general.
At last, we are on the way!
So finally, on November 16, the Space Launch System managed to fire its engines and lifted
off from the ground, accelerating rapidly despite a total mass equal to that of a hundred
TIRs.
Two minutes and 12 seconds after liftoff, at an altitude of 48,000 meters, the side
boosters of the massive launch system shut down and then disengaged, falling into the
sea.
And after eight minutes and 16 seconds, it was the main stage of the giant carrier rocket
that was undocked from the Orion.
After that, the capsule, together with the second stage and the service module, went
into a parking orbit at an altitude of about 200 km.
After a couple of circles around the Earth, the solar panels opened at the appropriate
time, and at about 3:20 a.m., after an hour and 33 minutes of flight, the second stage
fired its engine for 18 very long minutes, giving the Orion and its service module all
the thrust it needed to leave Earth's orbit and put the spacecraft on a trajectory toward
the Moon.
After two hours and six minutes, at about 3:53 a.m., the launch phase of Artemis 1 officially
ended with the separation of the Orion capsule from the now inert second stage.
And at this point, Orion found itself on a course toward the Moon.
This maneuver, named Transfer Lunar Injection, was one of the most critical phases of the
mission.
Indeed, timing in firing the engines is critical to intercepting the Moon along its orbit around
the Earth.
This allows the spacecraft to enter the lunar gravitational sphere of influence, a region
of space within which our satellite's attraction is dominant over Earth's.
A delay (or an advance) of a few minutes in the maneuver could have led to a trajectory
error such that the spacecraft would have been lost beyond the orbit of our satellite.
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What will happen from today onward So far, this is the chronicle of what happened
on the morning of Nov. 16.
But the mission will, of course, continue in the coming days, so all that remains for
us to do is to list everything that will happen from that date onward, hoping that everything
will continue to work excellently as it has so far.
After the Orion capsule enters the path to the Moon, the third stage will be abandoned
and the phase of the journey, called Transfer Lunar Orbit, will begin, which will bring
the capsule within sight of our satellite within three days.
At that point, on Nov. 25, the engines will be turned on again to slow the spacecraft
down and insert it into circumlunar orbit.
This maneuver is called Lunar Orbit Insertion.
After circumnavigating our satellite while releasing the 10 Cubesat satellites, which
represent the secondary science payload, Orion will enter a special orbit, called the Distant
Retrograde Orbit.
This orbit, which has never been used before, is found to be extremely stable with respect
to orbital perturbations as it interacts with the L1 and L2 Lagrangian points of the Earth-Moon
system, and will be the orbit that will follow the Lunar Gateway, or Lunar Space Station,
in future missions, which will be built starting in 2023.
This station will support all Artemis missions starting with Artemis 4 and provide support
for all future missions to the Moon and then to Mars.
The orbital variant will take Orion 60,000 km away from the Moon.
Thus breaking the distance record achieved by Apollo 13 in 1970.
After six days, the Orion capsule will exit the Distant Retrograde Orbit with another
lunar flyby, which will finally push it on its home course.
From that point, it will take about a week to return to Earth.
Re-entry into the atmosphere, after Orion's separation from the European service module
-which will be done at a few thousand kilometers altitude -will take place at a speed of 11
kilometers per second, 32 times the speed of sound.
It will be friction that will produce a deceleration of the capsule of up to 9g and, as a result,
an increase in the temperature of the heat shield to 2800 degrees Celsius.
Then, at an altitude of about eight kilometers, Orion will open its 11 parachutes and if all
goes as planned will dive into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California when it
is just past midnight in Florida on December 11.
The recovery team will arrive at the capsule from a San Antonio-class Navy ship and will
test extraction procedures ahead of the launch with Artemis 2 astronauts.
Is no one on board?
So when are the human crews?
On board Artemis 1, we repeat again, there are no astronauts.
As a result, life support, displays, and control instrumentation have been removed from the
capsule.
In its place are sensors and scientific instruments capable of detecting every single parameter
inside the capsule, such as radiation levels, pressures, and temperatures.
On board, however, there will be dummies, on which sensors are placed to monitor all
the radiation levels they will experience.
The name chosen for the main mannequin "Commander Moonikin Campos" goes to pay homage to the
famous engineer of the Apollo 13 mission, the one who played a key role in bringing
astronauts Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise safely back to Earth after an explosion
in the service module not only thwarted the lunar landing but also put a strain on the
simple re-entry.
Moonikin Campos will wear the same spacesuit that the astronauts will use and will be equipped
with an array of sensors that can measure several useful parameters, such as acceleration
values during the various phases of the journey, the vibrations to which the crew members will
be subjected and the level of radiation.
Campos will not be alone; joining him will be Zolgar and Helga, two human torsos similar
to those normally used for ballistic trauma simulations.
If Artemis 1 is indeed a success, in the next few years the Artemis 2 mission will repeat
essentially the same activities, but with a crew of four aboard Orion.
Not until 2026, with the Artemis III mission, is the actual lunar landing planned, with
the first black astronaut and astronaut walking the lunar surface.
There are still many uncertainties, however, in this regard--as of today, in fact, the
Artemis program does not yet have a system for the lunar landing.
On the Apollo missions, the descent module (LEM) was transported from Earth to the Moon
along with the rest of the instrumentation; Orion, on the other hand, travels without
vehicles to perform a lunar landing.
NASA has tasked Elon Musk's private space company, SpaceX, with providing this transition,
with a nearly $3 billion contract to make its Starship spacecraft compatible with lunar
activities.
Starship has long been under development at the large launch site-base in Texas where
SpaceX has focused much of its activities but has never reached Earth orbit.
Musk has repeatedly given optimistic predictions about the first orbital flight, but to date,
the system is in the testing phase and has experienced some delays.
In the future, however, Starship could become a much more practical and economical way to
reach the Moon than Space Launch System.
In fact, SpaceX's Starship is designed to do everything by itself: start from Earth,
travel to the Moon, make the lunar landing, and return.
It is also reusable, so it could make trips to the Moon extremely cheaper, but it has
yet to prove that it can work.
A simplified version will be used for the first Artemis missions, to handle only crew
transfers from the future Gateway in lunar orbit to the Moon.
Will it all work out?
Of course, we will, and from the moment Commander Moonikin Campos emerges safely from the capsule
on December 11, we will begin to count the months in that time until the launch of Artemis
II, the mission that will take men to circumnavigate the Moon for the first time since 1972.
A mission that will remind us very closely of the fantastic feat of Apollo 8 in Christmas
1968.
And just like then -yes, it will be all right.