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After announcing the delays, NASA is making steady progress on its ambitious plan to return humans to the Moon by 2026 under the Artemis program. The agency’s powerful and expensive Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, which will carry the Orion spacecraft and the crew to the lunar orbit, has completed a major milestone in its preparation.
The SLS rocket consists of a core stage that houses two huge propellant tanks: liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. These tanks fuel the four RS-25 engines that generate a whopping two million pounds of thrust at liftoff.
The liquid oxygen tank, which measures 51 feet in length, has been fully welded by technicians at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans. This means that all the major structures that make up the core stage for the Artemis III mission are ready for further outfitting.
See Also RelatedThe Artemis III mission, scheduled for 2026, will be the first to land astronauts on the Moon’s surface since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. The landing site will be near the lunar South Pole, where no human has ever set foot.
The liquid hydrogen tank, which is even larger than the liquid oxygen tank, has also been welded and is undergoing priming in a special facility at Michoud. Priming is a process that involves applying a protective coating to the external parts of the tank to prevent corrosion and damage.
The tank also needs to be cleaned internally to remove any contaminants that could affect the performance of the rocket’s propulsion and engine systems. After the cleaning, a foam-based thermal protection system is applied to the tank to insulate it from the extreme temperatures during launch and flight.
The propellant tanks must keep the liquid oxygen and hydrogen at very low temperatures, below -297°F and -423°F, respectively, to prevent them from boiling off. The tanks can hold more than 733,000 gallons of super-chilled fuel in total.
The SLS rocket for the Artemis III mission is one of many being built at Michoud. NASA and its contractor Boeing are working on several rockets in parallel to support the Artemis program, which aims to establish a sustainable presence on the Moon and pave the way for future missions to Mars.
The core stage for the Artemis II mission, which will send astronauts around the Moon in 2025, is nearing completion and will soon be shipped to NASA’s Stennis Space Center for testing. The core stage for the Artemis I mission, which will launch an uncrewed Orion spacecraft around the Moon later this year, has already been delivered to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center and is being integrated with the other components of the rocket.
NASA earlier officially announced that it is revising the schedule for its ambitious Artemis program, as the agency said that it is facing some technical challenges that require more time to resolve and is committed to ensuring the safety of its astronauts.
The first crewed mission of the Orion spacecraft, Artemis II, will now take place in September 2025 instead of 2024 as originally planned. The mission will orbit the Moon and return to Earth, testing the critical systems that support life in space.
The SLS rocket is the most powerful rocket ever built by NASA and the only one capable of sending Orion, astronauts, and supplies to the Moon in a single launch. Through Artemis, NASA will send the first woman, the first person of color, and the first international partner astronaut to explore the lunar surface and conduct scientific experiments. SLS is part of NASA’s backbone for deep space exploration, along with Orion, exploration ground systems, advanced spacesuits and rovers, Gateway, and human landing systems.
