NASA admits problems with its rocket to return to the moon: "It is the fastest, but not the cheapest."

The head of the US space agency, Jared Isaacman, released a statement in which he opened the possibility of outsourcing some parts of its lunar program to private companies, such as SpaceX.

NASA has acknowledged the problem with its rocket to return to the moon: it is the fastest way, but not the most economical.

El jefe de la agencia espacial estadounidense, Jared Isaacman, ha emitido un comunicado en el que abre la posibilidad futura de confiar más partes de su programa lunar a empresas privadas, como SpaceX

Artemis II: NASA delays manned mission to moon until at least March after leak

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Access to the roadmap for a human return to the Moon added a new delay This Tuesday, NASA completed the Artemis II mission's wetsuit experiment (general refueling experiment, or WDR for short)...with bitter results, forcing the flight to be delayed until a second launch window.That means we won't see the Space Launch System (SLS megarocket) Orion spacecraft and the four astronauts on board — Americans Reed Wiseman, Victor Glover and NASA's Christina Koch and Canadian Jeremy Hansen — until at least next March 6.

“With more than three years between Sls launches, we anticipated that we would meet Challamar,” Isaac hoped, and return to testing,” the head of the Agency said, without specifying dates for the next tests.

Dress rehearsal is one of the most important checks before any court assignment.In practice, it involves simulating the launch of a real union not to prove it, but rather to plan it.Sane works, but instead of planning to fix it.Uber discovered so much about this opportunity that it delayed takeoff by at least a month.

Bad weather is a deciding factor

Despite having to postpone the test due to inclement weather from Saturday to Monday and dealing with freezing temperatures in Florida, NASA was able to complete several key steps."NASA completed a fuel run for the Artemis II test flight early Tuesday, successfully loading cryogenic propellant into the SLS tanks, sending the team to the ramp to complete Orion's final operations and safely discharge the rocket."the agency said in another statement.However, this partial success does not hide that the process was far from smooth.

The exam officially began on January 31, counting down to 49 hours from 8:13 p.m. Eastern time in the United States. From the beginning, time played a role."Before and during the Feb. 2 installation, engineers studied how cold Florida weather would affect the system and implemented procedures to protect the hardware," NASA said.

Artemis II: ten days that decided a new era on the Moon

Patricia Biosca The main problem arose when loading liquid hydrogen, one of the most difficult propellants to handle."During the filling, engineers spent several hours solving a liquid hydrogen leak in the area used to direct the cryogenic propellant to the main stage of the rocket, which slowed them down in the calculations," details NASA.Efforts at the solution included stopping the flow, allowing the interface to heat up to redeploy the seals, and adjusting the loading rate.

Despite this, the teams managed to complete another part of the test.A team of five technicians was even sent to the launch site to complete the shutdown of the Orion spacecraft.However, when the first computational test was performed, the automated system stopped working.Reason: A "large amount of hydrogen leak" was found with five minutes to go.

Leaks weren't the only problem. NASA also reported additional problems, saying, "In addition to the liquid hydrogen leak, we recently replaced a valve associated with the pressurization of the Orion crew module hatch, which requires new adjustments. Added to this are delays in final operations, failures of some cameras due to the cold, and in particular a recurrence of the audio communication channel between ground teams, which had already been discovered several weeks ago. For all of this, the agency said it would allow "the team to confirm the data and conduct a second public test using the fuel" as soon as possible.The decision was made to postpone the launch until March.

A wink from the head of NASA to Elon Musk?

Hours after his first statement, the NASA administrator released a second, more revealing message outlining his views on the structure of the Artemis program.should,” he said, noting that more than three years passed between the first and second scheduled flights of the SLS.

Criticism of SLS is not new.In addition to the long delay during its construction, once on the Artemis I launch pad it recorded new failures that caused the rocket to conduct four general tests like this one this week.The problems did not end there: two take-off failures occurred before we could see it fly for the first time on November 16, 2022, which also happened in "moderate" conditions.

It took NASA three years to bring the pad to Artemis II (adding further delays to its history), various voices are criticizing the rocket, which is also the subject of debate in the US Congress. Even Elon Musk, in his political journey as Donald Trump's right-hand man, compared it "obsolete" with the SpaceX Falcon and the economy is not at all unstable, showing that it would be more suitable to use in its reusable rocket Starship - which, although still in testing, forhe thought of Artemis's future missions.But the distance from the president and the delays that the launch vehicle is experiencing have also called its system and NASA's confidence in SpaceX into question.

Isaacman, who actually traveled into space thanks to Musk, although he did not comment specifically on the matter, pointed out in the statement that "some missions carried out by NASA in the past and present may be transferred to the industry in the future", which suggests that he does not close the door on the possibility of cooperation with private companies.

"Where Apollo left off, Artemis will continue for decades as we explore and exploit the economic and scientific potential of the lunar surface," Isaacman wrote."It is where we will test the hardware and processes, including production of resources, nuclear power and propulsion, and the tools necessary for manned missions to Mars. In short, Artemis 2 will be a historic mission, but it is just the beginning. " The coming years will inspire the next generations.

The director of launch of Artemis, Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, explained in a press conference that, despite the defects found, in principle they will not return to the vehicle assembly building (VAB). "We believe that we will be able to solve the problems on the platform", he indicated, although he did not want to specify when the next test will take place.

The calendar change also has an immediate impact on crew members.Moving beyond the February period, the four Artemis II astronauts are scheduled to return home from precautionary quarantine, which began January 21 in Houston.They will be quarantined again about two weeks before the start of their new mission.

Artemis II is the first manned mission to leave low Earth orbit since the end of the Apollo program, which was shut down in 1972.Therefore, in particular, all delays, all exits and all deviations are included in the conservative process.For this reason, three launch windows were considered: February, omitted due to the problems mentioned above;the second, in March (scheduled for the 6th, 7th, 8th, 10th and 11th);and April (from the 1st to the 5th of this month).

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