If Artemis 1 can’t take off on D-Day, NASA has 157 fallback dates just in case


The Artemis 1 mission is supposed to lift off this summer. If things go wrong, NASA has scheduled dozens of fallback dates. Some are even listed in 2023.

2022 is a crucial year for humanity’s return to the Moon. It must indeed mark the beginning of the Artemis program, which succeeds the famous Apollo missions several decades later. This first milestone will be modest: there will be no moon landing with astronauts, nor any moon landing. There won’t even be anyone aboard the capsule.

But the Artemis 1 mission may well be uninhabited, its importance in NASA’s vast plan should not be underestimated: the flight will not only make it possible to test the colossal new rocket of the American space agency (the Space Launch System — SLS), but also to test the Orion capsule, which will make a loop around the Moon on this occasion.

The latest news is that the Artemis 1 mission is supposed to leave at the end of July 2022. Assuming things go well, because any difficulty during the preparatory phases of the flight is likely to cause delays – NASA cannot afford to leave uncertainty : at the slightest discrepancy, NASA must check what is happening and correct any problem, if necessary.

NASA is also constrained by external parameters, starting with space mechanics: the Moon may well be very close to the Earth (it is less than 385,000 kilometers away), present an elliptical orbit which is predictable and whose particularities have been documented, it remains an exercise in high-level mathematical calculation and physics.

NASA also lists flight opportunities in 2023, just in case

This is why NASA has planned a launch on July 26 at the earliest, then a series of fallback dates if ever the following slots are missed. And we can say that the American space agency has planned broadly: it has listed dozens of windows of opportunity for Artemis 1 in case the first opportunities cannot be seized.

NASA has in fact identified all its possibilities for the coming year, between July 2022 and June 2023! There are a total of 158 launch windows, some tailored for relatively short missions (the mission would last 26 to 28 days, enough time for Orion to loop around the Moon and then back), others for longer flights (38 to 42 days).

NASA has something to bounce back from if postponements are necessary. // Source: NASA

It should be noted that the Space Launch System is technically available anytime. You can completely plan your takeoff day or night, at any time, as long as the weather conditions are suitable. What can constitute a real obstacle is at the level of the Orion capsule, since it is this vehicle which must take into account the trajectory of the Moon.

It is to be hoped that NASA does not need to look for the last dates of its provisional calendar for Artemis 1, because that would be the sign of a very big delay caused by a major problem. This would then have the effect of probably causing the delay of the following missions and which rely on the success of the first to occur.

For further

The space missions of 2022 // Source: Editing Louise Audry / Numerama



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