NASA Repairs Artemis 2 Rocket, Continues Eyeing April Moon Launch (space.com) 31
NASA is eyeing an April launch window for the upcoming Artemis II mission after it repaired a helium-flow issue on the Space Launch System upper stage rocket. "Work on the rocket and spacecraft will continue in the coming weeks as NASA prepares for rolling the rocket out to the launch pad again later this month ahead of a potential launch in April," NASA wrote in an update on Tuesday. Space.com reports: The repair work occurred inside the huge Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. Artemis 2's SLS and Orion crew capsule have been in the VAB since Feb. 25, when they rolled back to the hangar from KSC's Launch Pad 39B. Just a few days earlier, the Artemis 2 stack successfully completed a wet dress rehearsal, a two-day-long practice run of the procedures leading up to launch.
In the wake of that test, however, NASA noticed an interruption in helium flow in the SLS' upper stage. That was a significant issue, because helium pressurizes the rocket's propellant tanks. Rollback was the only option, as the affected area in the upper stage was not accessible at the pad. The problem took a potential March launch out of play for Artemis 2, which will send four astronauts on a roughly 10-day flight around the moon. It will be the first crewed flight to the lunar neighborhood since Apollo 17 in 1972.
The next Artemis 2 launch window opens in April, with liftoff opportunities on April 1, April 3-6 and April 30. And those options apparently remain in play, thanks to recent work in the VAB. That work centered on a seal in an interface through which helium flows from ground equipment into the SLS upper stage. That seal was obstructing the interface, which is known as a quick disconnect.
In the wake of that test, however, NASA noticed an interruption in helium flow in the SLS' upper stage. That was a significant issue, because helium pressurizes the rocket's propellant tanks. Rollback was the only option, as the affected area in the upper stage was not accessible at the pad. The problem took a potential March launch out of play for Artemis 2, which will send four astronauts on a roughly 10-day flight around the moon. It will be the first crewed flight to the lunar neighborhood since Apollo 17 in 1972.
The next Artemis 2 launch window opens in April, with liftoff opportunities on April 1, April 3-6 and April 30. And those options apparently remain in play, thanks to recent work in the VAB. That work centered on a seal in an interface through which helium flows from ground equipment into the SLS upper stage. That seal was obstructing the interface, which is known as a quick disconnect.
No April 20? (Score:5, Funny)
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Starship says "hold my bong".
Half-baked management realized the risk was too high after catching half a dozen rocket scientists sucking on a helium “leak”..
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When you say "largest building by interior volume" I guess you mean it had the biggest single room with no walls, floors, or support beams interrupting the space. Tho not as tall, Madison Square Garden, built a year before the VAB, seems a far vaster space than the VAB interior. I'm only speaking subjective impressions, but I stand by my disappointed first, and following, impressions. The VAB is overhyped and they ought to get over it. PR is important for NASA, and many of their visitors are from big cities
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You can fit almost MSGs on top of each other inside the VAB, with room left over for another MSG if you chop it up to fit.
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PR is important for NASA, and many of their visitors are from big cities where they see bigger buildings all the time. NASA should stop disappointing their fans with overblown claims about a gigantic building
You've spent almost as much time here bitching about how it's not that big as NASA has spent saying it is. It's not like it's a critical job function for them to call the building large.
Re: Huge it ain't (Score:4, Informative)
Your perception in the moment may have been skewed by lack of details to measure scale by. Without the commonplace rows of windows and stories it doesnâ(TM)t look that big. However, it is still the ninth largest building in the world by volume. 3.66 million cubic meters Was eighth only a couple years ago. Curse you Gigafactory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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The VAB has it's own weather systems inside, with clouds.
Pretty damn big.
I hope it doesnt go wrong (Score:5, Funny)
Oh wait, they count that as a success.
Re: I hope it doesnt go wrong (Score:2)
Right to repair? (Score:2)
So, NASA has a "right to repair" clause in the contract with the consortium that built the SLS stack?
Or is this just another misleading headline for an article that fails to call out the responsible parties...
talk about overpaid incomptence (Score:1)
we should already have a space station and a moon base instead we have a bunch of rich kids playing at being 'scientists'
we need astronauts not administrators
this is exactly what classism and corruption look like :(
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If I remember right, there's been a couple space stations (international collaborations).
A moon base requires having a thing that can get up there, and after the shuttle era, there wasn't much being launched from KSC/Cape Canaveral until recently... and, they don't want a repeat of Apollo 1 (kind of bad PR, and there's that little thing called funding).
But... we need administrators to get astronauts to take the big risk... the government isn't gonna just write a blank check for NASA without someone worthy/k
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Sadly, those are and were not real space stations, real space stations rotate so they are habitable. A real orbital station would be a docking facality in orbit available to many spacecraft. It would have orbital assembly platforms and it would have an extensible infrastructure and a full time occuptaion with real workers, not some space cowboys. What we have instead is a few space capsules bolted together. It's a start but barely.
For all the money invested, we the public should have so much more already. H
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The rotating idea from 2001 and other sci-fi movies would only give you some amount of gravity (and would make docking a decently big challenge, having to get your capsule or shuttle spinning to match the station, which again uses some fuel), which requires a fuel of some sort to keep the station spinning (either venting gas or burning thrusters), which requires occasional topping up from a craft, which means having a launch vehicle that works and is reusable to some degree.
Hate to break it to you, but NASA
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The rotating idea from 2001 and other sci-fi movies would only give you some amount of gravity (and would make docking a decently big challenge, having to get your capsule or shuttle spinning to match the station, which again uses some fuel),
There is a thing called a spin decoupler to allow docking to a non spinning part of the hub.
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we need the simulated effects of gravity for many reasons, one is health, the other is that some processes depend upon the effects of gravity. a big part of this reason is we're used to operating with a sense of up and down so our enviroments should feature that in order for people to be productive, another reason is we need people to be in space long term, it's too expensive to keep using rockets as elevators for orbital commuters
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That works on the outer ring, they get ~1g... the docking port and center portion probably has more than 1g.
A spin decoupler (more or less, a big roller bearing with some sort of attachment point or lip for the 'shuttle' to clamp onto), wouldn't solve the issue of more gravity that the center portion would experience... sure, you could slow it down when a 'shuttle' docks, and speed it back up once the new crew is in place, but all that requires fuel of some sort for braking and speeding up, so the shuttle i
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sigh, we don't need to decouple the spin when spacecraft can easily match the spin of the station
did you not watch 2001: A Space Oddessy?
all one needs do is balance two sections of a cable and spin, this will create basic up and down in each section
it's no wonder collectively we're in trouble
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You mean a Sci-Fi movie from 1968 when nobody had tried this kind of thing in the real world?
Okay... go outside and whip donuts with your car and try to park it perfectly (nearest manhole in the car's exact center... anything else results in the car exploding)... which rotational speed does the 'shuttle' need to match... the center (which is higher speed than the outer ring) or the outer ring... oh, and controls are manual, not autopilot (because computers can generate errors... AI slop, anyone?).
Try this f
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partisan bs like yours is exactly why none of this is going anywhere
remember, it's one sided people who end up going around in circles
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He was always surrounded by too much chaos for some reason.