On Wednesday evening we may very well witness a historic moment in human spaceflight when — weather and any other difficulties permitting – NASA’s towering Space Launch System rocket will thunder off the launchpad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida carrying the Orion spacecraft and its four astronaut passengers aloft for the beginning of a journey that will take is closer to the moon than we’ve been in half a century.
That’s right, after being forced to scrub the previous launch attempts in February, primarily due to helium leaks, NASA is once again preparing to try and send up a crewed Orion capsule atop its enormous, 322-foot-tall Space Launch System rocket for Artemis II, a mission that will have us closer to the moon than we’ve been since Apollo 17 in 1972. This time, NASA engineers are feeling confident about the state of the rocket and Orion capsule, NASA officials reported in their final briefing on launch readiness.
There are some concerns about clouds, unfortunately. While the weather for Tuesday’s launch time is nearly perfect and the best weather on offer this week for the launch, there’s some chance that cumulus clouds may form near the launch site at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
If so, this could force the launch to be delayed. While cumulus clouds may not sound like much of a threat there’s a chance that the clouds can grow tall enough for a rocket to trigger lightning as it flies through or even nearby such a cloud formation.
So far, NASA officials have said that there’s an 80 percent chance of acceptable weather conditions on Tuesday while everything went smoothly at the rocket’s wet dress rehearsal in the days leading up to the launch which is slated to lift off no sooner than 5:24 p.m. CST. If the launch ends up being scrubbed, the next launch window will be on Saturday.
And if it does go up on Wednesday we’ll be one large step toward actually putting boots on the lunar surface again. Crewed by NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, the mission will send the Orion spacecraft on a 10-day long shot around the moon aboard this Orion capsule that the crew has dubbed Integrity.
This mission will be focused on testing out how the Orion capsule’s life support and other systems function when actually in use, including docking maneuvers. If anything seems to be malfunctioning while the crew capsule is in Earth’s orbit, NASA mission control can opt to bring the crew back. After that, when the crew capsule approaches the moon it will be pulled into lunar gravity which will then allow a “free return” trajectory where the moon’s gravity will toss the Orion capsule back to Earth without the astronauts having to so much as fire the engines. While all of this is happening, the astronauts won’t just be cooling their heels. They’ll be on the far side of the moon, able to see parts of the lunar surface that have never actually been seen by human eyes.
If all goes well, the plan is to get boots on the lunar surface within the decade. Originally, NASA was planning to have astronauts actually land on the moon again with Artemis III, which was slated for 2028. However, in the wake of the crop of helium leaks and other issues that saw Artemis II’s first launch attempt scrubbed, the federal space agency has recalibrated their plan.
Now, Artemis III is scheduled to launch in 2027 where it will rehearse connecting up with the lunar landers currently under development by both SpaceX and Blue Origin. If everything works out, NASA might be ready to go for a landing with either Artemis IV or Artemis V, potentially as soon as 2028. Of course, that’s a big if; when it comes to space travel, history has shown us that it’s seldom the case that everything just goes off according to plan.
For now though we’re all just waiting on Artemis II to go up, allow the Orion crew to take a gander at the far side of the moon (the Apollo astronauts only landed on the near side of the moon) and let us all know what it is that they see.
