NASA is about to take the first step on its journey to return people to the moon by the end of the decade. If all goes well, a massive uncrewed rocket will lift off from the Kennedy Space Center tomorrow morning, then orbit the moon before it returns to Earth 42 days later.
The Artemis I mission marks a critical moment for NASA and the space industry. The Artemis program, named for the twin sister of the god Apollo in Greek mythology, aims to land the first woman and the first person of color on the moon as early as 2025.
Among the critical components of the mission are a Boeing Co rocket called Space Launch System, and an Orion crew capsule made by Lockheed Martin Corp.
Photo: AFP
The stakes are high for NASA and its corporate contractors after a decade of delays and cost overruns. It marks the first time since the end of the space shuttle program that NASA has debuted a new flagship vehicle and system geared toward human spaceflight.
After the shuttle was retired, NASA relied on Russia’s Soyuz rocket to get humans to and from the International Space Station and, more recently, has turned to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon crew capsule.
The return of NASA to moon missions has followed a long and tortuous path on Earth. Multiple administrations proposed ambitious human spaceflight programs after the end of the Apollo program of the 1960s and 1970s, only to fall victim to budgetary concerns and high-profile setbacks.
The Space Launch System has been in development for about a decade, slowed by myriad delays and cost overruns. More than five years behind schedule, the rocket has seen its cost soar from an original US$7 billion to about US$23 billion, an estimate by the Planetary Society showed.
Multiple audits of NASA’s main contractor, Boeing , have criticized the company for its management of the system, and have highlighted flaws throughout the vehicle’s construction and testing.
NASA and Boeing are tempering expectations ahead of the launch, saying that Artemis I is a test of a highly complex system.
“It’s not without risk,” NASA associate administrator Jim Free said. “We have analyzed the risk as best we can, and we’ve mitigated, also, as best we can.”
Even a successful test flight might not satisfy those who have criticized the Space Launch System’s high price tag and inefficiency.
SpaceX’s planned Starship spacecraft might prove even more powerful than the Boeing system, as well as cheaper to develop and launch when it becomes operational. Additionally, Starship is designed to be fully reusable.
It could be years before Starship is ready to carry humans to deep space, but NASA has contracted SpaceX to develop Starship as a human lunar landing system as part of Artemis. So, the Space Launch System and Starship could be seen as in competition with one another, but they could work together to help return astronauts to the moon.
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