The massive Space Launch System passed its first test with flying colors, NASA’s preliminary analysis concludes, and the Orion rocket and capsule are ready for their next mission: Artemis II, which will carry a crew into lunar orbit.
After numerous delays and huge cost overruns, some worried that the SLS (nicknamed the “Mega Moon Rocket”) would never get off the ground. But the November launch went (mostly) smoothly, as did the 25-day mission by an uncrewed Orion capsule.
While his success was evident, it was not a case of all or nothing. NASA teams had to analyze reams of data to make sure that Artemis I would not succeed despite severe problems. Fortunately, that doesn’t appear to be the case: although the teams are still working with the terabytes of raw data, the agency has stated that the mission is good enough to support its sequel.
“Based on evaluation conducted shortly after launch, preliminary post-flight data indicates that all SLS systems performed exceptionally well and the designs are ready to support crewed flight on Artemis II.” wrote NASA in a news post.
Emphasizing the point, SLS Program Manager John Honeycutt is quoted as follows:
The correlation between the actual flight performance and the predicted performance for Artemis I was excellent. There is engineering and an art to successfully building and launching a rocket, and analysis of the SLS rocket’s maiden flight puts NASA and its partners in a good position to power missions for Artemis II and beyond.
Key pressures, temperatures and other values were all within 2 percent of predictions. The team is no doubt working to reduce that delta even now.
The Artemis II manned mission was obviously entirely dependent on the success of Artemis I, and this is the clearest indication since launch that the SLS and Orion are quantifiably good enough. It’s a big step to say, “Yeah, we’re moving forward with getting astronauts on this thing,” but of course there’s a lot of work to be done before it’s done. The Artemis I timeline didn’t go exactly as planned, but having verified that the rocket works as expected may help speed up the next part of NASA’s grand plan to return to the moon.
