From long-awaited rocket launches to an unprecedented asteroid encounter, the past 12 months in spaceflight have been a doozy. The events of 2022 will be shaping space exploration and commercialization for years to come.
These striking images will let you relive the biggest moments of the year, like the Artemis 1 lunar mission, the DART asteroid deflection test, and the out-of-control Chinese rockets (yes, plural). Good, bad, or ugly, these developments produced a wealth of memorable imagery.
A demonstration to confirm a repaired hydrogen leak appears to have gone well, with NASA declaring Wednesday’s cryogenic tanking test a success. Engineers still need to review the results, but the space agency could be on track to perform its third launch attempt of its SLS megarocket in just six days—a mission that would officially kick off the Artemis lunar program.
Launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson declared a “go” for tanking at 7:30 a.m. (all times Eastern), around 30 minutes after the intended start time. Ground teams began the process of loading more than 700,000 gallons of propellant into the megarocket, beginning with the core stage. Today’s cryogenic tanking test, as it was called, happened as the 321-foot-tall (98-meter) rocket stood at Launch Pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The test follows two previous launch attempts, both of which ended in scrubs, for different reasons. The first scrub, on August 29, was the result of a faulty sensor that recorded erroneous engine temperature readings, while the second scrub, on September 3, was the result of a significant hydrogen leak, which NASA subsequently traced to damaged seals at the quick disconnect fitting between a liquid hydrogen fuel line and the core stage. SLS uses a mixture of oxygen and liquid hydrogen, the latter of which has a propensity to leak due to its small atomic stature.
Not willing to attempt a third launch attempt just quite yet, NASA officials decided to run a cryogenic tanking test, the primary objective of which was to “look at the two new seals,” as Tom Whitmeyer, deputy associate administrator for common exploration systems development at NASA, told reporters on Monday. NASA officials refrained from calling today’s test a wet dress rehearsal, as key wet dress objectives, such as going into the terminal count phase of the countdown and powering the Orion spacecraft and side boosters, were not included in Wednesday’s test.
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For today’s test, a key strategy was for ground teams to employ a “kinder, gentler” approach to tanking. Engineers felt that a slower approach would lessen the chance of thermal shock, as components come into contact with ultra-cold propellants at temperatures reaching -423 degrees Fahrenheit (-217 degrees Celsius). It’s possible that thermal shock, or an unintended over-pressurization, resulted in the hydrogen leak on September 3, but the true cause of the faulty 8-inch seal, which exhibited a possible indentation mark less than 0.01 inches in size, is not yet known.
At around 9:45 a.m., ground teams transitioned from slow fill to fast fill. An hour later, the teams reported a hydrogen leak at the quick disconnect between the rocket and the tail service mast umbilical, in what was an ominous sign. Blackwell-Thompson signed off on the ensuing plan to warm the line and reset the connection point, and the teams were back in business about an hour later. Speaking to Blackwell-Thompson after the test, Derrol Nail, launch commentator for NASA, said, “you could kind of feel the room deflate a bit, but as [the ground teams] got past it, you could feel a certain lifting of the room.”
The tanking moved quickly and smoothly after that, with the completion of the thermal conditioning of the rocket’s four RS-25 engines happening shortly before 1:00 p.m. The teams managed to fully fill the core stage and the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS), otherwise known as the upper stage, with propellants. By 3:45 p.m., launch controllers had completed the pre-pressurization test, with de-tanking activities starting shortly thereafter. “All objectives for the Artemis 1 cryogenic demonstration have been met,” tweeted NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems at 4:33 p.m., and the test was declared complete 20 minutes later.
“I think the test went really well,” Blackwell-Thompson told Nail. “We wanted to learn, we wanted to evaluate the [tail service mast umbilicals] under cryogenic conditions.” She said teams were also working with a new loading operation, the so-called kinder, gentler approach, which Blackwell-Thompson described as being “very purposeful.” Ultimately, “all test objectives were accomplished today,” she said.
NASA will need to review today’s test results and decide how to move forward. Ideally, the engineers will like what they saw, setting the stage for launch in just six days. Assuming the test is as much of a success as it appears to be, NASA could launch SLS as early as September 27, with a 70-minute launch window opening at 11:37 a.m. ET. For that to happen, however, the space agency still needs to receive a waiver from the Space Force’s Eastern Range, which manages launches along the Florida east coast. NASA is currently attempting to launch the Artemis 1 mission, in which the SLS rocket will deliver an uncrewed Orion capsule on journey to the Moon and back.
A successful launch would be the start of the Artemis era, in which NASA is seeking a sustainable and sustained presence in the lunar environment. Artemis 1 is a demonstration mission that would set the stage for Artemis 2, in which a crewed Orion spacecraft will attempt a similar journey in late 2024.
NASA, after three failed attempts to complete a wet dress rehearsal of its Space Launch System, has decided to return its gigantic rocket to the Vehicle Assembly Building. The move will likely mean further delays to the Artemis 1 uncrewed mission to the Moon.
Space is hard—we get it—but the recently unconcluded SLS wet dress rehearsal was just plain sad.
Indeed, NASA couldn’t even complete a modified launch rehearsal this past Thursday, in which ground crews were attempting to load the rocket’s core stage with cryogenic propellants. A small hydrogen leak on the tail service mast umbilical was blamed for the test stoppage, with NASA saying it would re-run the modified launch test early this week. The space agency quickly changed its plans, however, announcing on Saturday that the 322-foot-tall (98-meter) rocket will return to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at Kennedy Space Center for repairs.
The SLS wet dress launch rehearsal is being done in advance of the upcoming Artemis 1 mission, in which NASA will attempt to launch an uncrewed Orion capsule to the Moon and back, sans lunar landing. Standing on Launch Complex 39B at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the rocket was to be fully loaded with propellant and a countdown stopped just prior to the ignition of its four RS-25 engines, but neither of those things happened. It’s not a fantastic result, as SLS represents a critical component of the Artemis program, which seeks to land U.S. astronauts on the Moon later this decade.
In its press release, NASA said the decision to roll SLS and the Orion capsule back to the VAB was “due upgrades required at an off-site supplier of gaseous nitrogen used for the test.” The nature of these upgrades and the time required to implement them weren’t disclosed, but the space agency said it would “take advantage of the opportunity” to fix the rocket directly in the hangar.
Specifically, NASA needs to swap out a faulty helium check valve that prevented ground crews from loading supercooled liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen into the rocket’s second stage during the second wet dress attempt. The valve, measuring just 3 inches long, can only be accessed when the rocket is inside the VAB. NASA will also use this time to fix the leaky umbilical, review the results of the test, go over its schedule, and decide on the remaining list of SLS test requirements.
Officials with the space agency have stressed that nothing is fundamentally wrong with the rocket and that they’re simply having to deal with minor, or “nuisance,” issues. That may very well be the case, but the sheer volume of issues and the incessantly stilted manner in which the propellant loading was being performed, does seem problematic.
During a media teleconference held today, Tom Whitmeyer, deputy associate administrator for common exploration systems development at NASA, said it’s a “delicate dance to bring a rocket alive” and a “really complicated thing to do.” “We absolutely are going to do a wet dress rehearsal,” he said, including going through to terminal countdown prior to launching SLS.
The SLS wet dress started on April 1, but a steady slew of problems prevented the test from running to its completion. These problems included faulty ventilation fans on the mobile launcher, a misconfigured manual vent valve, overly cold temperatures and frost during propellant loading, and the aforementioned problem with the third-party supplier of gaseous nitrogen. A lightning storm on April 2 and the Axiom Space mission to the International Space Station, which launched from Kennedy Space Center on April 8, also contributed to delays.
Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, Artemis launch director, said it will take ground crews until April 26 to prepare SLS for its crawling, 4-mile (6.4-kilometer) journey back to the VAB, which will take approximately 12 hours.
Blackwell-Thompson described three possible scenarios for moving forward. The first is a “a quick turn option,” in which the team would address a minimal number of issues and then roll the rocket back to the launch pad in preparation for the next launch rehearsal. The second option would involve the “complete set of work” required to bring the rocket to its final launch configuration, while the third option would involve a full wet dress rehearsal followed by the Artemis 1 launch, without rolling the rocket back to the VAB in between. It would be premature to speculate as to which of these is the leading candidate, she added.
As for the Artemis 1 mission, the next three windows for launch are June 1 to 16, June 29 to July 17, and July 26 to August 9. At the press conference, Whitmeyer said, unsurprisingly, that the “early June window is challenged at this point.” Hopefully the next attempt at a wet dress rehearsal will go far better, and that these windows will remain valid.
This article was updated to included comments and information provided during the April 18 NASA press conference.
NASA’s third attempt at a modified rehearsal of the Space Launch System (SLS) came to a halt on Thursday when a leak of liquid hydrogen was detected during tanking operations. The space agency is planning another wet dress rehearsal for the Moon rocket no earlier than April 21.
This is the latest in several setbacks to the rocket’s wet dress rehearsal, including delays due to weather, malfunctioning ventilation fans, and valve issues.
“All the issues that we’re encountering are procedural and lessons learned,” Mike Sarafin, Artemis mission manager, said during a press conference on Friday.
A wet dress rehearsal is when the 322-foot rocket is filled with fuel as it sits on top of a launch pad, and the team runs through a mock countdown to prepare for the day of launch. The rehearsal is critical for the launch of Artemis I, an uncrewed mission to the Moon and back, and the first step to returning humans to the Moon by the year 2026.
This wet dress rehearsal was first scheduled for April 1, but was initially delayed due to technical issues that prevented the crew from loading the rocket up with fuel. Before the next test date on April 11, the team discovered a faulty valve, which led them to modify the rehearsal and plan on only fueling the SLS core stage, and not its upper stage.
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Thursday’s third attempt was unfortunately not the charm, as the team discovered a leak of liquid hydrogen from the tail service mast umbilical, which connects the base of the mobile launcher to the core stage. Liquid hydrogen is one of two propellants used for the rocket, the other being liquid oxygen.
By the time the wet dress rehearsal was shut down, about 49% of the tank was filled with liquid oxygen, and only 5% of the other tank was filled with liquid hydrogen. The team successfully managed to cool down the lines used to load propellant into the upper stage, but were not able to flow any propellant to the stage due an issue with a valve.
Still, the team behind the SLS rocket say they aren’t giving up. “There’s no doubt in my mind that we will finish this test campaign, and that we will look into the hardware and the data will lead us to the next steps,” Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, Artemis launch director, said during the teleconference. “We will launch this vehicle… and we will be ready to go fly.”
A critical multi-day test of NASA’s Space Launch System was called off on Monday due to an issue with a cryogenic propellant pressure vent valve. The space agency seeks to resume the wet dress rehearsal in the near future, saying there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the gigantic rocket.
Space is hard, as the saying goes, and that’s certainly true when it comes to preparing a never-flown rocket for a mission to the Moon and back. NASA is currently fitting its much-anticipated SLS rocket for launch at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, but the wet dress rehearsal failed to reach the finish line. The rocket was to be fully prepped—including tanks topped with super-cold propellant and the countdown started—but not launched.
“The mega Moon rocket is fine. We’re working to get it into a launch position,” Tom Whitmeyer, deputy associate administrator for Common Exploration Systems Development at NASA, told reporters yesterday during a media teleconference. “We’re just going to have to work our way through it,” he said, adding that the ground teams are “doing a really good job.”
This work is being done in preparation for the uncrewed Artemis 1 mission, the inaugural flight of SLS. The next-gen rocket is a critical component of the Artemis program, which seeks to land a man and woman on the Moon later this decade. NASA is currently targeting a June launch, but that will depend on the results of the yet-to-be completed wet dress rehearsal.
The space agency halted the test on Monday after ground teams were unable to proceed with the loading of cryogenic liquid hydrogen propellant. The problem was eventually traced to a manual vent valve that was left in the closed position, an unfortunate configuration that couldn’t be remedied remotely. In a statement, NASA said “the valve positioning has since been corrected.” The team did manage to load approximately 50% of the required cryogenic liquid oxygen propellant into the core stage, which was subsequently drained.
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The misconfigured vent valve, located on the 160 level of the mobile launcher, was hardly the only problem faced by ground teams during the rehearsal, which got underway on Friday, April 1. Four lightning bolts struck the launch pad on Saturday, resulting in a slight delay, but the test came to full stop on Sunday when two fans, which are designed to ventilate the rocket’s 370-foot-tall (113-meter) mobile launcher, glitched out.
Despite this and another problem having to do with the third-party supplier of gaseous nitrogen, NASA resumed the wet dress on Monday. But again, new problems appeared, including a temperature limit issue for the cryogenic liquid oxygen, causing a delay of several hours. Resolved, the rehearsal continued, but the vent valve problem forced the launch director to call it a day at 5:00 p.m. EDT on Monday.
NASA is now preparing for the next wet dress attempt, but it’s stepping aside to allow for the launch of the Axiom Space Ax-1 mission, which is set to blast off from Kennedy Space Center on Friday morning. A date for the resumption of the launch rehearsal hasn’t been announced, but NASA officials said it’ll happen soon. The fully integrated rocket, with the Orion capsule up top, continues to stand on launch pad 39B.
Whitmeyer brushed off the less-than-ideal launch rehearsal, saying the ground teams learned “a couple things” from this “highly choreographed dance” that simply need to be cleaned up. “Sometimes you run into something that you weren’t really expecting,” he told reporters, comparing it to puzzle pieces that don’t quite fit. The “vehicle is doing pretty good,” said Whitmeyer, adding that similar issues were encountered during the SLS Green Run tests at NASA’s Stennis Space Center and during the development of the Space Shuttle.
At the press conference, Mike Sarafin, Artemis mission manager, said the teams have detected “no fundamental design flaws or issues” with the rocket and the problems experienced are best characterized as “nuisance” or “technical issues” that couldn’t be detected during prior testing.
“By putting it all together, you learn where the uncertainties are, and we’re working our way through that,” Sarafin said. “Sometimes you learn that a full system is slightly different than the subscale, but there are no major issues to overcome.” Most of the problems are small or procedural in nature, he said, such as slight adjustments to timing or limits, but “in terms of the rocket, the hardware is fine, the spacecraft is fine—we just gotta get through the test and the test objectives,” he said.
“It was a significant day for us. Our team accomplished quite a bit,” Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, Artemis launch director at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, told reporters. Indeed, while it’s tempting to focus on the negatives, the team did manage to cross many items off their substantial checklist. These included the configuring of Launch Pad 39B and the mobile launcher, powering up Orion and the rocket in launch configuration, checkouts of the guidance, navigation, and control system, and the draining of propellant after the test, among others.
No date has been set for Artemis 1 or the resumption of the wet dress, but the good news is that the rehearsal won’t have to start from scratch. The clock is currently on hold, and the launch system remains in an ideal configuration, NASA officials said. The main priority moving forward will be to finally fill the core and second stage with cryogenic propellants and stop the countdown at T-10 seconds. When asked if SLS will still launch in June, Sarafin said: “We’re not giving up on it yet.”
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NASA is poised to take a major step forward this week as it readies the Space Launch System for its inaugural launch and the official start of the Artemis era.
Speaking to reporters yesterday at a media teleconference, NASA said it has completed its final reviews and—at long last—SLS is finally ready for the launch pad. Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, Artemis launch director at NASA, said “we are in very good shape and ready to proceed with this roll on Thursday evening,” UPI reports. To which she added: “It’s going to be just a wonderful, wonderful sight when we see that amazing Artemis vehicle cross the threshold of the [Vehicle Assembly Building] and we see it outside of that building for the very first time.”
Weighing 5.75 million pounds, the fully stacked rocket—along with the Orion capsule nestled up top—will depart NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building at 5:00 p.m. EDT on March 17. The 4-mile (6.4-kilometer) journey will take anywhere from six to 12 hours to complete, as NASA’s Crawler-Transporter 2, moving at less than 1 mile per hour, will slowly deliver the rocket to Launch Pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The rocket’s arrival at the launch site will set the stage for the critically important wet dress rehearsal, during which time the rocket will be loaded with propellants and a practice countdown conducted and stopped just prior to ignition. The wet dress is currently scheduled for April 3.
According to SpaceNews, NASA expects that it will take over eight hours to load SLS with the liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellants, whereas it took 2.5 hours to load the Space Shuttle, which used similar components. There are two reasons for this, as Blackwell-Thompson explained; first, “it’s a big ol’ stage,” she said during the teleconference, and secondly, SLS has an upper stage that requires fueling, and the loading process for this rocket must be staggered.
Upon completion of the wet dress rehearsal, the tanks will be drained and the rocket will return to the Vehicle Assembly Building for further tests and tweaks. NASA has yet to announce a date for the first launch of SLS, but during a briefing on February 24, the agency mentioned a launch window that opens on May 7 and closes on May 21. The inaugural launch represents the Artemis 1 mission, the first in the new Artemis lunar program that will eventually see humans land on the Moon again. That Artemis 1 might happen in June or July is not out of the question. NASA will be in a better position to announce the date of the launch upon completion of the wet dress; as Tom Whitmeyer, NASA’s associate administrator for exploration systems development, said during the teleconference, SLS is “a highly complicated vehicle and very complicated machine.”
At launch, the rocket’s quartet of RS-25 engines will provide 8.8 million pounds of thrust, which is 15% more than NASA’s Saturn V rocket from the Apollo era. As a fun aside, SLS will be the tallest rocket on a NASA launch pad since the Apollo 17 mission.
SLS is a much-delayed project, so this is all welcome news. For the Artemis 1 mission, an uncrewed Orion capsule will travel to an orbit 40,000 miles beyond the Moon and return to Earth, without reaching the lunar surface. Artemis 2, scheduled for May 2024, will be a repeat, except it will carry a human crew. Artemis 3, which could happen as early as 2025, is the big prize: That’s when two NASA astronauts—a man and a woman—will walk on the Moon.