Artemis 1 Mission, Unmanned Return Flight to the Moon, Ends This Sunday

The Artemis 1 mission ends this Sunday (11), with a landing of the Orion capsule on the coast of California.

It will be the end point in the test that should pave the way for the return of humans to deep space, with further visits to the surroundings and, in time, to the lunar surface.

The final test of the crew module, for now occupied only by three mannequins stuffed with sensors, takes place during re-entry and landing in the water, when a new thermal shield –larger than those manufactured for the old Apollo missions– will have to withstand something like 2,700 degrees Celsius (about half the temperature on the surface of the Sun) in a fast braking starting from 40 thousand km/h, at the moment of re-entry, to the smooth descent aided by parachute in the ocean.

For the service module, supplied to NASA by the European Space Agency (ESA) and manufactured by the aerospace company Airbus, success is already complete.

The design was an adaptation of propulsion modules developed for freighters originally created to transport supplies to the International Space Station. There were, however, adaptations. The most striking of them, the docking of an engine originally developed for the American space shuttle by the Rocketdyne company, to give greater maneuvering power for insertion into lunar orbit and return to Earth. Four major powered maneuvers were performed during the mission, all flawless and fuel efficient relative to original estimates.

The super rocket SLS, developed by NASA and manufactured by the giant Boeing for the new lunar missions, also proved to be reliable, performing all stages of the flight until the translunar injection that put Orion at the beginning of its 25.5-day mission.

With the expected successful reentry and recovery of the capsule, NASA is ready to plan its first manned mission to deep space since Apollo 17, which ended the first era of lunar exploration in 1972.

It won’t be as fast as enthusiasts might want. Despite the investment so far exceeding US$ 50 billion, between the Orion capsule, the SLS rocket and ground systems, there are still bottlenecks that prevent a faster evolution of the program.

Example: it was decided, in order to save US$ 100 million, to reuse the on-board computers of Artemis 1 in Artemis 2. The time to recondition the equipment could end up pushing the mission to 2025, although the agency is still working with the perspective of a flight in 2024.

In the field of SLS, which until then was the biggest reason for delays, now there is advance, and several of the elements of the next rocket are already ready.

For the first manned landing, expected in the Artemis 3 mission, it still remains to test the Starship vehicle, developed by SpaceX. The company expects to make its first orbital flight in early 2023, but a moon landing with astronauts is not expected to take place before 2026.

In short: the gears are moving forward into a new era of lunar exploration. Manned missions will mix with unmanned ones, countries will mix with companies, and the expectation is that this time humanity will go to the moon to stay. But whether that will actually happen, only the future can tell.