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NASA just gave us our best look yet at its Artemis III lunar lander test flight.
The agency presented a detailed concept of operations for Artemis III today (October 23) during a press conference in Kennedy Space Centeremphasizing how important the flight is to his lunar plans and how difficult it will be to make everything go smoothly.
“We are launching three of the most powerful rockets in the world and undertaking what is likely the most complicated launch campaign ever undertaken,” said NASA Director Jeremy Parsons. Artemis Program manager, said during today’s event, which lasted more than two hours.
These three rockets belong to NASA Space Launch System (SLS), SpaceX Spacecraft and Blue Origin New Glennall of which will fly from Florida’s Space Coast.
If all goes according to plan, New Glenn will lift off first, carrying Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lunar lander to low earth orbit (LION). SLS will then go ahead and launch the Astronauts of Artemis III — Randy Bresnik, Andre Douglas and Frank Rubio of NASA, and Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency — aboard the NASA spacecraft Orion spacecraft.
SLS will deploy Orion in a highly elliptical orbit, which will come 29 kilometers and 1,122 miles (1,806 km) closer to Earth, according to Parsons. The capsule will then move into an orbit at an altitude of approximately 345 miles (555 km).
“It’s really about achieving thermal stability,” Parsons said. “Orion was built as a deep space vehicle, and so we’re going to have to really deal with the thermal environments, which are higher in low Earth orbit.”
The Artemis III crew will spend two days checking Orion and its systems in LEO before encountering Blue Moon, which will occur on the third day of the flight at an altitude of 273 miles (439 km).
“Over the next two days, the crew will conduct docked operations at Blue Moon,” Parsons said. “They’re going to open the hatch. They’re going to enter the lander. They’re going to evaluate the environmental controls, the life support systems. We’ll confirm that the spacecraft can maintain the right air pressure, and we’ll also test emergency scenarios, dual vehicle control, and we’ll put our mission control teams through their paces.”
Once these operations are completed – probably on Flight Day 6 or thereabouts – Starship will be launched, with a specially designed docking adapter on its nose.
The SpaceX vehicle – the 52-meter-tall upper stage of its fully reusable Starship megarocket – will meet Orion in LEO on Flight Day 8, at an altitude of about 237 miles (381 km). But it will be a very different meeting from the meeting with Blue Moon.
“The demonstration with Starship is shorter, about two hours,” Parsons said. “The crew won’t enter the Starship during the mission, but it gives us critical data and allows us to really understand the docking forces, how we’re going to push, how we’re going to work together.”
Artemis III will continue for another six to nine days after Orion detaches from Starship before finally returning to Earth for a parachute-assisted ocean landing. (The nominal duration of the mission is 14 days, Parsons said, but it could last up to 17 days.)
During this time, the crew will evaluate their survival suits – something that was not done during the 10 days. Artemis II flight around the moon last April – and also carry out a variety of other work, from detailed health assessments to scientific experiments and technology demonstrations. The main goal is to keep everything on track for Artemis IV, which will land astronauts near the Moon’s south pole in 2028, if all goes according to plan.
“Everything we do on Artemis III is designed to reduce the risks associated with our future lunar landing missions,” Parsons said. “We’re teaching these teams how to work together, how to make critical mission decisions in real time, all in a low Earth orbit environment, where if something goes wrong, we can get home much faster.”
It is not yet clear which of these two private landers – Blue Moon or Starship – will fly on Artemis IV, making the first crewed lunar landing since Apollo 17 in 1972.
NASA still preserves the optionality, “to give our two lunar landing partners the greatest opportunity to prepare before the astronauts land on the moon in 2028,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said at today’s event.
“We have no intention of abandoning a viable path to the surface before the data and schedule force us to,” he added.
Whatever NASA decides for Artemis IV, Blue Moon and Starship should hit gray earth fairly quickly, according to Parsons. “Regardless of who goes first, both providers are planning moon landing missions in 2028,” he said.
And these missions will be very different from each other. For example, during the Blue Origin landings, Orion will encounter Blue Moon in lunar orbit. During SpaceX’s landings, however, Starship will likely dock with NASA’s capsule in Earth’s orbit and boost it toward the Moon, Parsons said — the “push” he talked about above.
It’s unclear when exactly Artemis III will launch. NASA is aiming for summer of next year, but it may have trouble meeting that schedule: last month, in a internal noteIsaacman told agency employees that Artemis III was about 90 days overdue.
Some of the biggest challenges involve the supply chain for the mission’s lunar landers, Parsons said at today’s event. But both he and Isaacman stressed that NASA is confident in its ability to solve such problems.
“We are moving forward with real speed and determination right now,” Isaacman said.
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