A look into NASA’s new rocket.
By: Kaung (12.1)
Humans haven’t landed on the moon since 1972. The last manned mission to the Moon was Apollo 17 that took place between December 7 and December 19, 1972. The 12-day mission shattered several records, including those for the longest spacewalk, the lengthiest lunar landing, and the biggest lunar samples ever returned to Earth. Now Nasa is preparing to go back to our celestial best friend, the moon, for the first time in 50 years! What will be there for us? What will we discover? What can we predict for the future of mankind from this mission?
The newest rocket Artemis 1 was planned to launch from the Kennedy Space Centre on a journey to the Moon on 29th of August 2022. This is the most powerful rocket in the world that will have ever been launched. The rocket contains RL10 Engine producing 24,750 pounds (110kN) of thrust, 4 RS-25 Engines accelerating the rocket to more than 17,000 mph during the first 8 minutes of flight, Solid Rocket Boosters that burns approximately six tons of solid propellant each second to help lift the enormous rocket off the launch pad and send it soaring into space, Liquid Hydrogen Tank holding 537,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen fuel for the RS-25 Engine, Liquid Oxygen Tank holds 196,000 gallons of liquid oxygen being the oxidizer in the combustion reaction that fuels the RS-25’s main engines. With all of the state of the art technology Artemis-1 will be able to lift off with the thrust of 8.8 million pounds with mass of 5.75 million pounds. The distance it would travel is 1.3 million miles but it would only take 25 days, 11 hours, 21 minutes with the re-entry speed of 24,500 mph (32 times the speed of sound).
Unfortunately, Artemis-1 had 2 launch attempts waived. The first launch was scheduled on the 29th of August 2022 but because of a liquid hydrogen leak while loading the propellant into the core stage of the Space Launch System rocket, Nasa had to scrub this launch opening. The second launch attempt had to be canceled because of Hurricane Ian then there was a leaky hydrogen inlet leading to the rocket, and a problem with ice in the booster's foam insulation. They have to cool down the four main RS-25 engines to -420 degrees in order to handle the extremely cold propellants at engine ignition. A sensor in one of the four engines indicated it was not cooling down to a proper temperature.
The good news is that there is another launch opening on the Monday of Nov 14 2022. If this launch is a success Artemis-1 will be taking a 25 days, 11 hours, 21 minutes journey and hurdling back down to our Mother Earth on December 9 of 2022.
So with all this information what can we expect from this fabulous launch? Why should we care? Why is this multi-million dollar space launch so important? Well just imagine the kinds of pictures, experiments, and videos we are going to get using the technology from 2022. The technology that has received the sound of our nearest black hole, the clearest and most beautiful picture of Jupiter ever taken. More importantly this will be the first step for us humans to step towards creating a permanent human presence on the Moon. It’ll be like our new International Space Station. Now knowing that there is a new element on the moon that can solve our energy problem, Artemis-1 can give us the opportunity to take a leap to research more on this quadrillion dollar business. In doing so we will prepare ourselves and develop technology that will help us send humans to Mars!
So before the next year starts we are heading back to the moon to see how much it has changed and explore things we haven’t seen 50 years ago. Starting from making fire from hitting two rocks we humans have come to an outlandish journey to even being able to send machines and detect galaxies that are light years away from home. What a fascinating journey. I just can’t imagine what our future scientists and engineers can bring forth.
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