NASA’s Orion spacecraft entered a high-altitude orbit around the moon Nov. 25 in the latest major step in the Artemis 1 uncrewed test flight. The Orion spacecraft fired the main engine in its European Service Module at 4:52 p.m. Eastern for 88 seconds. The maneuver changed the velocity of the spacecraft by about 110 meters per second, placing the spacecraft into a distant retrograde orbit (DRO) around the moon. The use of DRO is unique to Artemis 1. The Artemis 2 mission will fly a free return trajectory around the moon, while Artemis 3 and later missions will go into a near-rectilinear halo orbit around the moon, which will also be used by the lunar Gateway. NASA chose DRO for this mission since it is a stable orbit that enables testing of the spacecraft without requiring much fuel to maintain the orbit. Orion, though, will not remain in DRO for long. The spacecraft will perform a maneuver Dec. 1 to depart DRO, heading back towards the moon. The spacecraft will conduct another burn during a lunar flyby Dec. 5 to put the spacecraft on track for a reentry Dec. 11, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean off the California coast. Since its Nov. 16 launch, the Artemis 1 mission has gone well, with only a few minor issues. “In terms of overall systems failures, we haven’t seen a single thing on the rocket or on the spacecraft that would have caused us to question our reliability or our redundancy,” Mike Sarafin, NASA Artemis 1 mission manager, said at the most recent briefing about the mission Nov. 21.
A view of Earth taken by a camera on an Orion solar array Nov. 24, a day before the spacecraft entered a distant retrograde orbit around the moon. Credit: NASA
At the time of that briefing, NASA said it was looking at two issues with the spacecraft, one involving the spacecraft’s star trackers and what Sarafin called “funny indications” on the power system on the service module, where one of eight units used to distribute power opened without being commanded to do so. Neither issue, he said, were “hard concerns or hard constraints” on the mission.
“We don’t fully understand what the system and the flight hardware is telling us, but we’ve got ample redundancy and we are recovering from these ‘funnies’ that we see,” he said.
On Nov. 23, NASA reported that it lost communications with Orion unexpectedly for 47 minutes starting at 1:09 a.m. Eastern. The loss of signal took place during one of a regular series of reconfigurations of the link between Orion and the Deep Space Network. It was unclear if the problem was with Orion or ground stations, and NASA has not provided an update on the issue since first reporting the glitch.
Sarafin also said at that Nov. 21 briefing that the Space Launch System rocket that launched Orion met or exceeded requirements. “The results were eye-watering,” he said. “Everything was either on predict or off by less than 1%.”
Engineers are also reviewing the status of the mobile launch platform, which sustained some damage from the launch, including having its elevator blast doors blown off and damage to the platform’s deck. “The mobile launcher has a little bit of damage to it, but it will be ready to fly the crewed launch on Artemis 2,” he said. That mission is scheduled to launch no earlier than late 2024.
An agreement among three European countries could help secure near-term funding for launch vehicle development but have a bigger effect in the long term on how future projects are financed. The governments of France, Germany and Italy announced Nov. 22 they signed an agreement on “the future of launcher exploitation in Europe” intended, they said, to enhance competitiveness of European vehicles while also ensuring independent European access to space. The agreement includes a timetable that, by June 2024, calls for a new framework to be in place for public financing of vehicles such as the Ariane 6 and Vega C. That includes “a mechanism incentivizing cost reduction” with funding “commensurate to the commercial risks taken” and ability to achieve target prices. The agreement also endorses having new small launch vehicles under development by several European companies be able to compete for European Space Agency missions. That’s considered a priority for Germany in particular, which has supported development of commercial small launch vehicles. The agreement coincides with the ongoing ESA ministerial meeting where member states will allocate funding for projects, including launch vehicle development. ESA is seeking a little more than 3 billion euros ($3.1 billion) for space transportation overall, including 600 million euros for an Ariane 6 “transition program” as the long-delayed rocket, whose first flight has slipped to at least late 2023, enters service. The program has secured two-thirds of its funding going into the ministerial, but faced a gap of 195 million euros as the meeting started. ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher, speaking to reporters at the end of the first day of the ministerial council meeting Nov. 22, said he was optimistic the agreement announced by France, Germany and Italy would help close that gap.
The agreement among the governments of France, Germany and Italy comes as ESA seeks to secure funding for the "transition program" of the Ariane 6, whose first launch is now no sooner than late 2023. Credit: ESA
“This was quite important because this political understanding and agreement unblocks other discussions that then have an influence on subscriptions,” he said. “That was quite important and significant, and opened the door for a discussion later on.”
However, as of late Nov. 22 that funding gap was not yet closed, according to a source familiar with the negotiations. That was, the source added, to be expected given the nature of negotiations, including the iterative process where countries revise their funding commitments over several rounds.
The agreement will help close that funding gap, the source said, because it united France, Germany and Italy around support for both Ariane 6 and Vega C as well as future launch systems, creating interdependence among the countries given differing priorities. Any long-term agreement requires success in securing funding for launch programs at the ministerial.
However, the agreement appeared to open the door to revisit a long-standing ESA principle of “georeturn,” or apportioning contracts based on the share each country contributes to agency programs. Some larger countries have been critical of georeturn, arguing it makes programs less efficient.
The document stated that, as part of the new launcher framework, “such exercise would involve starting a reflection with concerned states on the conditions for the industrial and geographical distribution of work in exploitation.”
A statement from the French economic ministry was more blunt, stating that competitiveness would be achieved in part by a change in the rules for geographic return.
Any change, an agency source said, would be a long-term effort, and require the approval of ESA’s 22 member states, which would not be easy. The rules for Ariane 6 and Vega C in particular were set at the beginning of those programs year ago, although the source said that the georeturn issue could be examined for future launch vehicle development projects.
There is other pressure on ESA to reform its support of launch vehicle development. “There is no European space policy without autonomous access to space,” said Thierry Breton, European Union commissioner for the internal market, in comments at the opening session of the ministerial meeting Nov. 22.
“The shortage of autonomous launch capacity in the E.U. has a direct impact on the deployment of E.U. space programs like Galileo,” he said, referring to the ongoing pause in launching Galileo satellites because the Soyuz rocket is no longer available and Ariane 6 is delayed. “The situation is not sustainable for long, and there is an urgent need to remedy the situation through a truly European approach to have a fully autonomous, reliable and cost-effective E.U. launch solution, including, of course, backups covering all ranges of launchers.”
Breton said he expected ESA member states to back “sustained financing” of Ariane 6 and Vega C and work on future launch systems. The E.U., he said, “is definitely ready to support all these efforts, and it will.”
The Japanese government has formally agreed to extend its participation on the International Space Station through 2030 and provide components for the lunar Gateway. In a virtual ceremony Nov. 17, NASA and Japanese government officials signed an agreement outlining the roles that Japan will provide in the Gateway, including components for several modules and a cargo resupply mission. NASA, in turn, will fly a Japanese astronaut to the Gateway on a future Artemis mission. In addition to the Gateway agreement, Japan’s Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) Keiko Nagaoka announced that the Japanese government had confirmed its intent to participate on the ISS through 2030, joining the United States in extending ISS operations beyond 2024. “The United States welcomes Japan’s intention to extend its support of International Space Station (ISS) operations through 2030, following the United States’ announcement of our ISS extension one year ago,” Vice President Kamala Harris said in a statement. “In addition, our two countries are taking a step forward by reaching an agreement on collaboration on the Lunar Gateway orbiting platform, which will pave the way for the return of humanity to the Moon.” The new Gateway agreement updates one announced in January 2021. As with the earlier agreement, the Japanese space agency JAXA will provide the life support system, thermal controls, camera and batteries for the International Habitation, or I-Hab, module, being developed in cooperation with the European Space Agency. JAXA will also provide batteries for ESA’s European System Providing Refueling Infrastructure and Telecommunication (ESPRIT) refueling module and NASA’s Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO) module.
NASA's Orion spacecraft approaching the lunar Gateway. Japan agreed to provide components for Gateway modules and a cargo resupply flight in exchange for one astronaut mission to the outpost. Credit: NASA/Alberto Bertolin
Japan will develop a version of its HTV-X cargo spacecraft, called HTV-XG, to deliver supplies to the Gateway. NASA said the agreement includes a single mission to the Gateway no later than 2030.
In return, NASA said a JAXA astronaut will be included as part of the crew of a mission to the Gateway, but did not specify when that person would fly. In the January 2021 agreement, NASA only agreed to an “intent” to find flight opportunities for Japanese astronauts that would be finalized and documented in a later agreement.
“Today’s Gateway agreement represents the fulfillment commitments made by the Biden-Harris Administration and solidifies our nations’ collaboration, which will help ensure continued discoveries on Gateway, the International Space Station, and beyond,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in the statement. He signed the agreement on the behalf of the agency from the Kennedy Space Center, while Nagaoka signed the agreement from Tokyo.
NASA previously coordinated agreements with Canada and ESA for their Gateway contributions. Canada, which is providing a robotic arm for the Gateway, will fly an astronaut on the first crewed Orion flight, Artemis 2, along with a later Gateway mission. ESA will have three seats on Artemis missions, likely including the Artemis 4 and 5 missions that will deliver the I-Hab and ESPRIT modules to the Gateway.
While the Gateway agreement covers only a single astronaut flight, Nagaoka said in a MEXT statement that the country will still seeking to land a Japanese astronaut on the moon as the first non-American astronaut “by the latter half of the 2020s.”
NASA said that Japan’s announcement of its extension of ISS operations makes it only the second country, after the United States, to agree to participating on the ISS beyond 2024. Both Canada and ESA have indicated their willing to do so as well. Russia, despite comments this summer that it might leave the ISS partnership after 2024, is likely to remain a part at least until the late 2020s.
After years of delays, NASA’s Space Launch System lifted off for the first time Nov. 16, sending an uncrewed Orion spacecraft on a shakedown cruise around the moon. The SLS lifted off from Launch Complex 39B here at 1:47 a.m. Eastern. The rocket’s upper stage, called the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS), separated from the core stage eight and a half minutes after liftoff. The Orion spacecraft separated from the ICPS nearly two hours after liftoff, after the stage completed a translunar injection burn. “We have a priority-one mission in play right now,” said Mike Sarafin, NASA Artemis 1 mission manager, at a post-launch briefing. He was referring to the mission’s top priority to have the Orion capsule reenter at lunar velocities at the end of the mission, something enabled by the successful launch. “We had the rocket do its job and deliver the spacecraft to the point of translunar injection.” The Orion spacecraft was “performing exactly as we intended,” he said, with the exception of a few “funnies” or minor issues. That included a glitch with a spacecraft star tracker and microswitches in a solar array that did not immediately indicate it latched into place as expected when the array deployed, but later did so. The launch took place more than 40 minutes into a two-hour window after overcoming two issues during the countdown. A little more than three hours before the opening of the launch window, NASA reported a leak in a valve in ground equipment used to replenish the core stage’s liquid hydrogen tank. The launch director dispatched a small “red crew” to the pad to tighten bolts in the valve, fixing the leak.
NASA's Space Launch System lifts off for the first time Nov. 16 on the uncrewed Artemis 1 mission. Credit: Jordan Sirokie
“Our most likely case here was that we just had some loose nuts on those valves,” said Mike Bolger, Exploration Ground Systems Program manager, at a post-launch briefing. “We sent the team out and they did a terrific job, and we got the issue resolved.”
“It was a low moment when we first saw the leak,” he added, bringing up hydrogen leaks in past launch attempts, “but really a high moment when we recognized we’d solved the problem.”
Around the time the red crew completed its work, the U.S. Space Force, which operates the Eastern Range that includes KSC, said a radar needed to track the launch had malfunctioned, a problem traced to a faulty Ethernet switch. Replacing the switch took more than an hour.
The successful launch came after two scrubbed attempts in late August and early September. The first, Aug. 29, was called off when sensors indicated one of four RS-25 core stage engines had not properly cooled down, a problem later blamed on a faulty sensor. NASA scrubbed the second, Sept. 3, after detecting a hydrogen leak during fueling of the core stage.
NASA replaced damaged seals in the liquid hydrogen line and changed tanking procedures, which it successfully tested Sept. 21. However, Hurricane Ian forced NASA to send the SLS back to the safety of the Vehicle Assembly Building before making another attempt in a launch period that closed in early October.
NASA rolled the SLS back to the pad Nov. 4, then had to wait as Hurricane Nicole passed through Nov. 10. The storm caused “very minor” damage that mission managers concluded either could be repaired or was not a constraint to launch.
That damage included a caulk material called RTV that had started to come off the interface between the Orion crew capsule and its launch abort system in the aftermath of the hurricane. Sarafin said imagery showed “a couple indications” that additional material came off during flight, but that engineers were still studying the data to determine what, if anything did come off Orion during ascent.
Those earlier launch scrubs, though, were only minor setbacks for a launch vehicle whose development suffered extensive delays. The 2010 NASA Authorization Act, which instructed NASA to develop SLS, called for the vehicle to be ready by the end of 2016. Various technical issues, primarily with the rocket’s core stage, steadily pushed back the first flight of the vehicle until now.
The Artemis 1 mission will see the Orion spacecraft, without astronauts on board, go to the moon and enter a distant retrograde orbit there. Orion will remain in that orbit for five days, reaching a maximum distance from Earth of 480,500 kilometers. It will then depart the orbit and return to Earth, splashing down off the coast of San Diego, California, at 12:40 p.m. Eastern Dec. 11.
The 25-day mission is considered a “short-class” mission by NASA, versus missions of up to 42 days that Orion would have flown in two earlier launch attempts. The shorter mission will still achieve all the test objectives, but in a more compressed timeframe.
“We did proofs of concept early on to demonstrate that you can fit all the objects the program has decided they want us to accomplish into the shortest class mission,” said Emily Nelson, NASA chief flight director, in a Nov. 14 interview. “But, it’s much more of a Tetris puzzle to make sure all of those things fit in.”
Those plans are revised for each launch opportunity. “Each different launch opportunity is a new challenge in terms of when is the spacecraft in the right place to accomplish those different mission objectives,” she said.
Artemis 1 is designed to test the Orion spacecraft in cislunar space, including testing the spacecraft’s heat shield when reentering at lunar return velocities. It will be followed by Artemis 2, the first crewed Orion mission, no earlier than 2024.
The X-37B space plane landed Nov. 12 at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, Florida, at 5:22 a.m. Eastern, setting a new endurance record after spending 908 days on orbit. Its previous record was 780 days. This was the sixth mission of the crewless reusable plane, built by Boeing and jointly operated by the U.S. Space Force and the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office. Known as Orbital Test Vehicle 6, it launched to orbit May 17, 2020, on a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket. On this mission the X-37B carried several U.S. military and NASA science experiments, including a Naval Research Laboratory project to capture sunlight and convert it into direct current electrical energy, and the U.S. Air Force Academy’s FalconSat-8, which remains in orbit. One of NASA’s experiments was the Materials Exposure and Technology Innovation in Space (METIS-2). Scientists will use the data to understand the effects of the space environment on different types of materials. Another experiment was to investigate the effects of long-duration space exposure on seeds. The space plane is a derivative of the X-37A designed by NASA in the late 1990s to deploy from the Space Shuttle. The program later was transferred to the Defense Department. There are two X-37B spacecraft, which were originally designed for missions of 270 days, but have greatly exceeded that goal since the plane’s first mission in 2010.
The X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle-6 (OTV-6) landed at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center Nov. 12, 2022. Credit: U.S. Space Force
The Air Force for a decade kept the X-37B in a cloak of secrecy but the Space Force is now openly showing it off.
“This mission highlights the Space Force’s focus on collaboration in space exploration and expanding low-cost access to space for our partners, within and outside of the Department of the Air Force,” Gen. Chance Saltzman, chief of space operations, said in a statement.
“The X-37B continues to push the boundaries of experimentation, enabled by an elite government and industry team behind the scenes,” said Lt. Col. Joseph Fritschen, X-37B program director at the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office.
The OTV-6 mission for the first time carried a service module to host additional experiments.
The service module separated from the OTV before landing. The Space Force said the module will be disposed of in accordance with best practices intended to reduce the amount of space debris in orbit.
“With the service module added, this was the most we’ve ever carried to orbit on the X-37B,” said Jim Chilton, senior vice president of Boeing Space and Launch.
An Atlas 5 successfully launched a polar-orbiting weather satellite and a reentry technology demonstrator on the final flight of the vehicle from California. The United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 401 lifted off from Space Launch Complex 3 at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 4:49 a.m. Eastern Nov. 10. A problem loading liquid oxygen in the rocket’s Centaur upper stage delayed the liftoff by 24 minutes, two-thirds of the way into the 36-minute launch window. The Centaur upper stage deployed the mission’s primary payload, the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) 2 satellite, 28 minutes after liftoff, placing it into a sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of approximately 800 kilometers. The spacecraft made contact with controllers shortly after deployment. However, NASA reported nerly three hours after liftoff that they had yet to receive telemetry that the solar array deployed as planned. JPSS-2 is the second of four planned polar-orbiting weather satellites in the JPSS program to provide weather data for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. JPSS-1, built by Ball Aerospace, launched in 2017 and is in service as NOAA-20. An older satellite, Suomi NPP, also provides weather data from polar orbit but is nearing the end of its life as it runs out of stationkeeping propellant. Northrop Grumman built JPSS-2 and has contracts for JPSS-3 and -4, which will provide continuity for the JPSS program into the 2030s. Steve Krein, vice president of civil and commercial space at Northrop Grumman, said in an October interview that the company is “well along” in the production of the two future JPSS satellites.
An Atlas 5 lifts off Nov. 10 from Vandenberg Space Force Base carrying the JPSS-2 weather satellite and LOFTID tech demo. Credit: NASA TV
The satellites use the latest version of Northrop’s LEOStar-3 bus. “We’ve got a new avionics suite, we’ve got a new set of sensors, wheels, star trackers, et cetera, that we brought to bear both for the Landsat [9] mission and the JPSS mission,” he said. “It’s a continuous upgrade in components and operating paradigms.”
The JPSS satellites provide critical weather data that complements observations by the GOES series of satellites in geostationary orbit. “JPSS data is a major input into U.S. and international global numerical weather prediction models,” said Jordan Gerth, meteorologist and satellite scientist at NOAA’s National Weather Service, during a pre-launch briefing Nov. 8. “With JPSS, the quality of local three- to seven-day weather forecasts is outstanding.”
A secondary payload on the launch was the Low-Earth Orbit Flight Test of an Inflatable Decelerator (LOFTID), a technology demonstration of an inflatable heat shield. LOFTID separated from the Centaur 75 minutes after liftoff, after the upper stage performed two burns to place it on a reentry trajectory.
The vehicle appeared to perform as expected through reentry, deploying a parachute and splashing down in the Pacific Ocean east of Hawaii 2 hours and 13 minutes after liftoff. A recovery vessel will pick up the spacecraft as well as a separate data recorder ejected from LOFTID before splashdown.
LOFTID is designed to test the performance of an inflatable decelerator six meters across, collecting data during reentry before splashing down east of Hawaii. NASA is interested in using that technology, scaled up, for landing future Mars missions too large for existing entry, descent and landing systems. ULA, which cooperated with NASA on LOFTID through a Space Act Agreement, is studying using that technology for recovering engines from its Vulcan rocket.
The launch was the 100th mission for NASA’s Launch Services Program, which coordinates launches for NASA science missions. It is also the final Atlas 5 launch for the program and the final Atlas 5 launch from Vandenberg. ULA will convert the launch pad for use by Vulcan.
The Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft rolled back out to the launch pad Nov. 4 as the agency prepares for the third attempt to launch the vehicle on Artemis 1 mission later this month. SLS and Orion, on its mobile launch platform, arrived at Launch Complex 39B at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Nov. 4, a little more than nine hours after emerging from the Vehicle Assembly Building. The rollout was the fourth for the vehicle since March. The rollout supports NASA’s plans to conduct the next Artemis 1 launch attempt Nov. 14, with liftoff scheduled at 12:07 a.m. Eastern at the beginning of a 69-minute launch window. Two backup windows are reserved for Nov. 16 and Nov. 19. In a Nov, 3 call with reporters, Jim Free, associate administrator for exploration systems development, said managers gave the go-ahead for the rollout after reviewing weather forecasts that show the risk of a tropical storm system forming and heading towards Florida early next week. “Our engineering team thought it was an OK risk to go out tonight,” he said. Mark Burger, launch weather officer with the U.S. Space Force’s Space Launch Delta 45, said there is only a 30% chance of the system becoming a named storm, with peak wind gusts not expected to exceed 74 kilometers per hour. “Those are well within our constraints for riding out” the storm at the pad, he said. “We’ll have impacts from that in terms of the wind, but we’re not looking at any likelihood at this point of see a strong system emerge out of this.” SLS and Orion had been in the VAB since late September, when NASA rolled back to protect the vehicle from Hurricane Ian. Before the storm forced the rollback, agency officials felt they had resolved hydrogen leak problems that scrubbed the previous launch attempt Sept. 3.
The Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft emerge from the Vehicle Assembly Building to head to Launch Complex 39B for a Nov. 14 launch. Credit: Jordan Sirokie
The investigation into that leak has not turned up a single clear cause. “There’s not really a smoking gun, per se,” said Cliff Lanham, senior vehicle operations manager in NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems program. “We feel pretty confident that, through the loading procedures and controlling the pressures, we understand it much better now.”
“Our teams have continued to grow and learn about the vehicle, and we’re confident,” said Free, who added he felt they had three good opportunities to launch. “But, it’s a flight test.”
“What we’ve learned in every wet dress [rehearsal], our two launch attempts and our tanking test help build our confidence,” he said. “I don’t think we would roll out if we didn’t feel confident.”
If the vehicle does not launch by Nov. 19, there is a fourth possible launch window on Nov. 25. Beyond that, Free said NASA would likely leave the vehicle on the pad and wait until the next launch period opens in December, which would require getting waivers from the Eastern Range for the SLS flight termination system, much like what happened in September.
December also marks the deadline for the lifetime of the two solid rocket boosters. Lanham said that the boosters, which originally had a 12-month life when they were stacked in early 2021, have been certified through Dec. 9 for one booster and Dec. 14 for the other. If the vehicle doesn’t launch by then, Free said, they would do another “analysis cycle” on the boosters to see if their lives can be further extended.
