These dates were chosen to avoid a conflict with the NASA Dart mission, whose vessel must hit an asteroid on September 26 in an attempt to deflect it from its trajectory.
Le Monde with AFP
After two aborted attempts due to technical problems, nasa Announced Thursday, September 8, that she could try to take off her new megafusée towards the moon on September 23 or 27.
This highly anticipated flight of the Artemis-1 mission, without crew on board, must test in real conditions the SLS rocket (for Space Launch System) and the Orion capsule at its top, where astronauts will take place in the future .
The possible shooting window on September 23 will start at 6:47 am local (12:47 pm Paris time), while that of 27 will open at 11:37 am (5:37 pm in Paris), said Jim Free, a senior manager of the ‘American space agency, at a press conference. These dates were chosen to avoid a conflict with the Dart mission of NASA, whose vessel must hit an asteroid on September 26 in order to try to deflect it from its trajectory. The two missions need to use an international network of antennas called Deep Space Network.
The dates envisaged by the space agency will however depend on a special exemption that NASA must obtain in order to avoid re-tester the batteries on a system of emergency destruction of the rocket if it moves away from its trajectory to head towards a populated area.
If the agency does not receive this derogation, the rocket will have to return to the assembly building, which would repel the calendar of several weeks. The launch is highly symbolic, because it must embody the future of NASA in the face of the ambitions of China or SpaceX in particular.
Thermal shield
Takeoff of the NASA rocket, scheduled for the Kennedy space center in Florida, had been canceled at the last moment on Saturday for the second time in a week, a setback that rejects the effective launch of the American program back on the Moon , Artemis.
A fuel leak problem started in the early morning, at the time of the firing operations of the reservoirs of the rocket. Mike Bolger, a NASA official, said at the press conference that the agency was working to replace the joints to repair the ultra-cold liquid hydrogen leak. The orange and white SLS rocket, which has never stolen, has been in development for more than a decade, to become the most powerful in the world.
Fifty years after the last Apollo mission, Artémis 1 should make it possible to verify that the Orion capsule, at the top of the rocket, is sure to transport astronauts to the moon to the future. For this first mission, Orion will venture up to 64,000 kilometers behind the moon, further than any other habitable vessel so far.
The main objective is to test your thermal shield, the largest ever built. When he returns to the earth’s atmosphere, he will have to bear a speed of 40,000 km/h and a half temperature as high as that of the surface of the sun.