NASA says the Artemis I mission will be ready to launch in one month - Ars Technica

November of 2022, right? —

Set your alarm for 7 minutes aft midnight connected November 14.

Eric Berger - Oct 12, 2022 4:40 p.m. UTC

Enlarge / NASA's Space Launch System volition marque a nighttime motorboat connected its existent timeline.

Trevor Mahlmann

A small much than 2 weeks person passed since NASA prudently rolled its Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft wrong the monolithic Vehicle Assembly Building astatine Kennedy Space Center to support the hardware from Hurricane Ian.

During that time, engineers and technicians from the abstraction bureau and its contractors person performed a elaborate inspection of the rocket and spacecraft to find its formation readiness. This was an important process due to the fact that the vehicles person been successful a afloat stacked configuration for astir a year, since October 21, 2021. NASA wanted to measure the ongoing viability of batteries connected the rocket, hypergolic substance stored connected Orion's work module, and more.

The bully quality from those inspections is that lone minimal enactment is required to hole the rocket for its adjacent motorboat attempt, NASA said Wednesday in a blog post.

"Inspections and analyses implicit the erstwhile week person confirmed minimal enactment is required to hole the rocket and spacecraft to rotation retired to Launch Pad 39B astatine Kennedy Space Center successful Florida following the roll-back owed to Hurricane Ian," the bureau said. "Teams volition execute modular attraction to repair insignificant harm to the foam and cork connected the thermal extortion strategy and recharge oregon regenerate batteries connected the rocket, respective secondary payloads, and the formation termination system."

As a result, NASA present plans to determination the Artemis I stack backmost to the motorboat tract arsenic aboriginal arsenic Friday, November 4. This would let for an archetypal motorboat effort of the ngo astatine 12:07 americium ET (04:07 UTC) connected November 14. There is simply a 67-minute motorboat model for this opportunity. This motorboat day would let for a 25.5-day ngo for the Orion spacecraft earlier it splashes down successful the Pacific Ocean.

NASA besides has requested 2 further motorboat opportunities, connected Wednesday, November 16, astatine 1:04 americium ET, and Saturday, November 19, astatine 1:45 americium ET, some two-hour motorboat windows.

The abstraction bureau archetypal attempted to motorboat the rocket connected August 29, but a fewer hours earlier the planned liftoff, a sensor connected 1 of the rocket's 4 main engines gave an errant somesthesia reading. This yet drove a scrub of the motorboat attempt, but NASA subsequently said the sensor contented was not a problem. The bureau past performed a 2nd effort connected September 3, but this was scrubbed 2 hours earlier the motorboat model opened owed to a persistent hydrogen leak. After repairs, NASA conducted a fueling trial that appears to person verified the integrity of these leak fixes.

However, NASA inactive has not succeeded successful completing an full fueling and countdown objection test, truthful determination whitethorn beryllium much problems that harvest up successful the last 30 seconds earlier liftoff that person yet to beryllium uncovered.