The US space agency (NASA) will attempt to launch the new SLS moon rocket for the second time on Saturday, after the launch was canceled on Monday due to technical problems.
The launch will take place from NASA’s Cape Canaveral, Florida base, with a two-hour window of opportunity opening at 7:17 p.m. in Lisbon.
The test flight of the SLS, docked atop the Orion spacecraft, which will orbit the moon with three mannequins on board, was postponed due to a fuel leak, valve failure and insufficient cooling of one of its four engines. .
On Tuesday, the technical team met to analyze the data and decided to make the second launch attempt today, excluding the possibility of Friday, which had been envisioned in the previous calendar (which includes a third launch date, September).
If it materializes, the launch of the SLS, which has been successively delayed over the years, will mark the start of the Artemis lunar program, with which the United States plans to return in 2025, a year later than expected. to the surface of the moon. the ground the first female astronaut and the first black astronaut. The last landing was about 50 years ago, in December 1972.
NASA plans to put astronauts back into orbit around the moon by 2024.
The 98-meter-high SLS is NASA’s most powerful rocket since Saturn V, which took astronauts to the moon between 1969 and 1972 as part of the Apollo program. Only American astronauts, 12 in total, have been to the moon.
Like the Saturn V, the SLS is not reusable, so new units will have to be built for new missions.
The new rocket, which is twice as high as the Santa Justa elevator, in Lisbon, will carry in its first mission ten scientific microsatellites (the size of a shoebox) that, after being dropped into space, will help the study of the effects of the radiation, an asteroid or the icy surface of the moon.
Partly reusable, the Orion spacecraft will stay in space longer than any other astronaut spacecraft without docking to a space station, and will return to Earth faster and warmer. The heat shield is the largest ever built.
Orion has a European module (from the European Space Agency, ESA) that will take it to its destination and back “home”, providing astronauts on future missions with light, water, oxygen, nitrogen and temperature control.
The dummies aboard the first mission have sensors to test the effects of radiation, acceleration and vibration.
The spacecraft will orbit the moon for a few weeks, after separating from the SLS rocket, in distant orbit before returning to Earth and docking in the Pacific Ocean.
The first mission of the Artemis program lasts a month and a half and serves to test the performance and safety of the SLS and Orion flight.
With the new moon program, NASA hopes to set up “sustainable missions” to the moon from 2028 to later send astronauts to Mars. The departure for these moon missions or for Mars will be made from a space station that will be installed in the orbit of the moon, the Gateway.
In Greek mythology, Artemis (Artemis in Portuguese) was the twin sister of Apollo (Apollo) and goddess of the hunt and the moon.
Source: El heraldo
