NASA announced on Friday that the space agency is planning to long-delayed
maiden flight of its massive Space Launch System (SLS) during a 15-day
window in February. The rocket will send an uncrewed Orion spacecraft on
flight test around the moon.
The launch window will last from Feb. 12 to Feb. 27, officials said. A
flight will last six weeks if it is launched during the first half of the
window and four weeks during the second half. If the flight doesn’t take
place during that window, another one would open up two weeks later in
March.
Officials announced the schedule a day after engineers completed stacking
the first SLS/Orion system at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The
rocket and spacecraft are 322 feet (98.1 meters) tall.
“With stacking and integration of NASA’s Space Launch System rocket and
Orion spacecraft complete, we’re getting closer and closer to embarking on a
new era of human deep space exploration,” said NASA Administrator Bill
Nelson in a press release. “Thanks to the team’s hard work designing,
manufacturing, testing, and now completing assembly of NASA’s new rocket and
spacecraft, we’re in the home stretch of preparations for the first launch
on the Artemis I mission, paving the way to explore the Moon, Mars, and
beyond for many years to come.”
The schedule calls for the vehicle to be rolled out to Pad 39B by the end of
the year, with a full wet rehearsal of the launch conducted in early
January.
The February launch will be the second flight for the Orion spacecraft,
which flew an uncrewed mission in Earth orbit in December 2014. Orion was
launched aboard an United Launch Alliance (ULA) Delta IV Heavy rocket from
Cape Canaveral in Florida.
The 2014 flight featured only the Orion crew capsule. The launch in February
will be the first flight to include the European Service Module (ESM), which
is being provided by the European Space Agency (ESA). The module was adapted
from the Automated Transfer Vehicle, a now-retired spacecraft that
resupplied the International Space Station.
A successful flight would be a major milestone for the SLS and Orion
programs, which have suffered years of delays and multi-billion cost
overruns. Critics have decried the projects as boondoggles that should have
been canceled years ago in favor of commercial alternatives.
If the February flight goes well, NASA plans to launch SLS/Orion with a
four-member crew to the moon in 2023. It would be the first human flight
beyond low Earth orbit since the Apollo 17 moon landing mission in December
1972.
NASA has plans to land two astronauts at the south pole of the moon in 2024
as part of the Artemis program. The space agency awarded a contract earlier
this year to SpaceX to develop the Human Landing System that will take the
astronauts to and from the surface.
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