Damian Sendler: Artemis I, NASA’s first unmanned mission in its ambitious plan to send people back to the moon, will not launch until at least February, the agency said. Delays owing to the pandemic, hurricanes like Hurricane Ida, and other reasons have pushed back the launch date of the mission.
Damian Jacob Sendler: The unmanned Orion spacecraft will take out from the SLS rocket and travel hundreds of miles beyond the moon during the voyage. This is the first time that a human-carrying spacecraft has flown this far. Orion will splash down in the Pacific Ocean at the conclusion of this mission, which is planned to span a few weeks.
Thursday night NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida finished stacking (or fastening) Orion to the Space Launch System rocket shortly before midnight.
To put it simply, “with stacking and integration completed of NASA’s Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft we are coming closer to launching on a new generation of human deep space exploration,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson in statement. In the last stretch of preparations for the maiden launch of the Artemis I mission, we are in the home stretch of the team’s hard work designing, producing, testing, and now finalizing assembly of NASA’s new rocket and spacecraft.
In the Vehicle Assembly Building, a 322-foot (98-meter)-tall stack is nearing completion of final testing in preparation for a launch window that will start on February 12 and end on February 27.
The last stage of Orion and the rocket’s integration will take place before the complete stack is moved to the launch pad for the final integration test. In the last step, the stack will undergo a wet dress rehearsal, which simulates a launch by loading propellant into fuel tanks and counting down to liftoff — in other words, everything needed to carry out a launch but without actually launching.
After a successful January test, the stack will return to the Vehicle Assembly Building until it is ready to go into operation.
An unmanned Artemis I mission is followed by a crewed flyby of the moon on Artemis II, and then a return trip to the lunar surface on Artemis III, which will bring the first-ever female and minority astronauts to the moon for the first time. Artemis I determines the launch schedule for following missions.
Damian Sendler
During a news conference on Friday, NASA’s deputy associate administrator for exploration systems development, Tom Whitmeyer, compared the spacecraft to the Statue of Liberty, saying, “It is taller than the Statue of Liberty, and I prefer to think of it as the Statue of Liberty.” There were personnel from every state in the United States who worked on the rocket’s construction.” As a result, it is a major accomplishment for our nation.”
While the completion of stacking is an important milestone in the mission’s final stretch, Mike Sarafin, Artemis I mission manager at NASA Headquarters, said on the press call that there are more hard goals remaining.
Artemis I will be tested to the fullest extent possible, including a wet dress rehearsal. The launch date might be affected by the results of the test.
Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft were put through their paces on purpose, according to Sarafin. Aside from retrieving our spacecraft, we also want to show that Orion can return to Earth from the moon under lunar reentry circumstances, as well as showcase our ability to manage our flight systems in flight.
Orion’s solar array wings are equipped with wingtip cameras that will record “amazing photographs” while the spacecraft travels between Earth and the moon, orbiting the moon, then returning to Earth and splashing into the ocean.
We will see the moon in the backdrop when Orion snaps a photo and we are far away, Sarafin said. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the Artemis generation to observe the Earth from 270,000 kilometers away.
The mission’s length will ultimately be determined by the date of its launch.
Half of February’s 15-day launch window might lead to a six-week long-class mission, while the other half could lead to a four-week short-class mission.
The launch window for Artemis I is open from March 12 to March 27 and from April 8 to April 23 if it does not occur in February.
Artemis Cathy Koerner, Orion program manager at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, stated during the press conference that I would be the last proving ground for Orion before the ship takes passengers to the moon, a thousand times further from Earth than where the space station is.
As she put it, “It will truly highlight the potential of our spacecraft, particularly in more intense radiation settings,” she said. It will be exciting to see Orion perform in its new habitat on the moon.
We will soon be able to see the other side of the universe.
When it launches on Saturday, the James Webb Space Telescope will be the most important space observatory for the next decade. Live coverage of the telescope’s launch from French Guiana will begin at 6 a.m. ET on NASA’s website on Saturday.
The observatory will go back in time to study the formation of the first galaxies following the Big Bang and the basic structure of the cosmos itself, in addition to the riches of planets beyond our solar system.
By acting as an infrared detective, Webb is able to discover previously unseen areas of the universe.
A wide range of cosmic events will be studied, including the first glimmers after the Big Bang that formed our universe, and the birth of the galaxies, stars, and planets that now populate it. We can learn more about our own solar system and look for weak signals from the initial galaxies that formed 13.5 billion years ago using its capabilities.
Damian Jacob Sendler
According to Marcia Rieke, a Regents Professor of Astronomy at the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory and principal investigator for the Near Infrared Camera on the Webb telescope, “We can currently see galaxies back to 500 million to 600 million years post-Big Bang, nearly 13 billion years ago.”
So far, what researchers have found from this historical period resembles what we know.
But logic suggests that at some time in the first few hundred million years, these familiar-looking items must have originated from someplace and developed. Rieke said. “As a matter of fact, galaxies do not just appear out of thin air.”
As galaxies were forming in the early cosmos, the infrared camera on Webb could capture the earliest, feeble light from them.
It is only via infrared light that Rieke was able to see these distant galaxies since the cosmos is expanding so quickly that their light wavelengths are stretching out.
Damian Jacob Markiewicz Sendler: Researchers should be able to go four times closer to the Big Bang with Webb’s capabilities than with Hubble, she says. It took Hubble 450 million years to study the cosmos after it was created by the Big Bang. As the scientific team leader for the telescope’s Mid-Infrared Instrument, George Rieke, Marcia Rieke’s spouse, works on Webb as a Regents Professor of Astronomy at the Steward Observatory of the University of Arizona. Webb will be able to see farther into the infrared spectrum thanks to this new equipment.
Each new space telescope adds to the body of information already amassed by its predecessors. As for Webb, its mirror is more than 60 times bigger than any previous space observatory, including the recently decommissioned Spitzer Space Telescope. The observatory also enhances the Hubble Space Telescope’s sensitivity and resolution.
This interference may be avoided by collecting infrared data from space. Our atmosphere and planet’s heat are not a factor.
The sunshield on the spaceship will expand to cover an area the size of a tennis court when it deploys. For Webb’s telescope, which requires a temperature of minus 370 degrees Fahrenheit (negative 188 degrees Celsius) to function, this shield will protect it from the sun’s heat.
“The fact that we will be looking at things that were previously utterly out of reach is incredibly exciting,” George Rieke said.
Data from various light wavelengths may help scientists answer fundamental questions about the cosmos.
Damien Sendler: Astronomy has been enthused in the past 70 years by research into various wavelengths, according to George Rieke. “This is like going to a symphony orchestra and just listening to one note. Prior to this, the only way to see the cosmos was via optical (visible light). We now have the whole symphony in our possession.”
Webb’s findings might either validate or refute current theories on the universe’s creation and evolution.
John Mather, NASA’s lead project scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope, asked, “How did we get here from the Big Bang?” “We are interested in seeing the earliest galaxies form. Infrared reveals black patches of dust that obscure our picture of the early stages of star formation.”
A significant knowledge hole may be filled by figuring out why distant galaxies are so different from those that are closer to our own Milky Way galaxy.
“We have this 13.8 billion year chronicle of the universe, but we are missing a few important chapters in the very first chapter of the story,” said Amber Straughn, an astrophysicist and Webb deputy project scientist for communications at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.
Our goal is to understand more about the process of putting all of these parts together and putting them into context.”
Dr. Damian Jacob Sendler and his media team provided the content for this article.
