Artemis II: Day One
Humanity, finally, begins it's return to the Moon
Artemis II has launched into Earth orbit with its crew of four, ultimately bound for the first visit to the Moon since 1972. This is a historic mission, which has already caught the imagination of many people around the world who do not normally follow space missions. I will be publishing a daily update for the mission here, and I encourage readers to share this article with anybody who has become space-curious, and to get them to subscribe for the whole series:
Numerous issues that occurred during testing of the rocket caused its launch date to be put back several times from the original target of February, but the launch day itself went quite smoothly. There were a few minor glitches during the countdown - trouble closing the hatch, a faulty reading on one of the batteries for the launch abort system - but these were resolved in a timely fashion and the rocket lifted off only 11 minutes into a 2 hour launch window.
The ascent proceeded without issue, and inserted the capsule, named Integrity, into a low altitude elliptical orbit around the Earth, with the lowest point being inside the atmosphere and its apogee being at an altitude of around 2,200km. At the first apogee, the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS) performed a burn to raise the perigee out of the Earth’s atmosphere. The core stage remained on the original insertion orbit, reentered and burned up.
After another half orbit, the ICPS fired for a final time to raise the apogee of the orbit, placing it in a high altitude Earth orbit with an apogee of around 70,000km above the surface. At this point, the capsule separated from the upper stage, and used it as a target for a practice of rendezvous and docking that will be needed on future missions. The high Earth orbit has a period of around 24 hours, meaning the crew has ample time to check out the spacecraft and ensure it is good for the lunar voyage, whilst still remaining close to Earth for a quick return if anything is off. When the Orion capsule reached the apogee of this orbit, it performed its first burn to raise the perigee in preparation for trans-lunar injection
The only problem that seems to have arisen during this period is with the toilet, which is not a critical system anyway as the crew have backup facilities (essentially going in bags, as the Apollo crew did). The problem was fixed though, and the crew are now at the time of writing preparing for Trans-Lunar Injection (TLI), where the engine on the capsule’s service module will perform the final burn to send the crew on a free return trajectory around the Moon.
The Purpose of the Mission
This mission has drawn much attention in the media, and the first question many have on learning of it for the first time is “what’s the objective?”.
The simplest answer is that it is a test flight. This mission itself will not achieve any of the ultimate objectives of the Artemis program, which are all now occurring on the surface of the Moon, but it will demonstrate the capsule that will be used to achieve those objectives, buy down risk, and practice procedures. As Apollo 8 was a necessary step towards achieving the Moon landing with Apollo 11, Artemis II is a necessary step in achieving a Moon base beginning with Artemis IV.
If this is accepted, the obvious next question is on the purpose of Artemis itself. This has always been that the US should return to the Moon to stay, and not just visit, but until the recent refocusing of the lunar effort by the new NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, the details on this were unclear. Now there is more of a firm plan.
A Moon base will be established which will serve as both a proving ground for Mars - where technology can be demonstrated with the safety net of being able to return to Earth at any point in 3 days, rather than having to wait 6 months - and also as a site for commercial exploitation of the resources of the Moon. The critical difference between a Moon base and an orbiting station such as the ISS (or the Lunar Gateway that was part of the original Artemis plan, but is now cancelled) is that a surface base has a supply of raw materials at hand. By developing technology to turn these raw materials into useful items, such a base can turn 1kg of Earth cargo into 10, 100 or 1000kg of actual payload.
Mass is the fundamental constraint in space, and so this kind of leverage is critical for the ambitious projects to build huge data centres, solar power satellites, giant space telescopes and human habitats in space. The Moon base will be an amplifier for every space ambition, both from the public and private sector.
Tomorrow, assuming all goes to plan with the trans-lunar injection burn, I will be discussing the trajectory design of this part of the mission, and why it differs from the Apollo program. If you haven’t already, please consider subscribing to follow along with the mission.