NASA Is Making Big Changes to Speed Up the Artemis Program
“It’s just not the right way to go,” Isaacman said.
A senior NASA official, speaking to Ars, noted that the space agency experienced hydrogen and helium leaks during prelaunch preparations for Artemis I and Artemis II, and that these problems led to launch delays of several months.
“If I remember correctly, the time between Apollo 7 and Apollo 8 was nine weeks,” the official said. “Releasing SLS every three and a half years or so is not a recipe for success. Certainly making each one a work of art with major configuration changes doesn’t help the process either, and we’re clearly seeing the results of that, aren’t we?”
The objective is therefore to standardize the SLS rocket in a single configuration in order to make the rocket as reliable as possible, and to launch launches as frequently as every 10 months. NASA will fly the SLS vehicle until there are commercial alternatives to launching crews to the Moon, perhaps via Artemis V as Congress has mandated, or perhaps even a little longer.
Is everyone on board?
The NASA official said all of the agency’s major contractors agreed with the change, and that senior congressional leaders had been briefed on the proposed changes.
The biggest opposition to the proposals apparently comes from Boeing, which is the prime contractor for the Exploration Upper Stage, a multibillion-dollar contract to develop a more powerful rocket that was to be launched for the first time later this decade. However, in a NASA press release, Boeing appears to offer at least some support for the revised plans.
“Boeing is a proud partner of the Artemis mission and our team is honored to contribute to NASA’s vision for American space leadership,” Steve Parker, president and CEO of Boeing Defense, Space & Security, said in the press release. “The SLS core stage remains the most powerful rocket stage in the world and the only one capable of carrying U.S. astronauts directly to the Moon and beyond in a single launch. As NASA establishes an accelerated launch schedule, our workforce and supply chain are prepared to meet increased production needs.”
Strong reasons to change Artemis III
NASA’s new approach to Artemis reflects a return to the philosophy of the Apollo program. In the late 1960s, the space agency flew a series of crewed preparatory missions before the Apollo 11 moon landing. These included Apollo 7 (a low-Earth orbit test of the Apollo spacecraft), Apollo 8 (a lunar orbit mission), Apollo 9 (a low-Earth orbit rendezvous with the lunar lander), and Apollo 10 (a test of the lunar lander descending towards the moon, without landing).
With its previous Artemis model, NASA ignored the milestones achieved by Apollo 7, 9 and 10. In the view of many industry officials, this jump from Artemis II – a crewed lunar flyby testing only the SLS rocket and the Orion spacecraft – to Artemis III and a full Moon landing was huge and risky.
The Artemis II crew rehearses a walkout from the Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Crate Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
