We managed to glean some interesting details about the Artemis III mission - Ars Technica

Overview

We managed to glean some interesting details about the Artemis III mission

“I was on the phone with Blue Origin leadership that night, all the next day, all through the weekend.”

Details

On Tuesday, NASA announced the crew for the Artemis III mission, which is scheduled to be flown no earlier than summer 2027. As part of the announcement, space agency officials also discussed plans for the crew to dock with both a Blue Origin lander and a Space X Starship lander during the spaceflight in low-Earth orbit.

The presentation, although informative, still left open key questions about the landers’ readiness and what exactly they’ll look like. After the crew announcement, Ars sat down with Jeremy Parsons, NASA’s Artemis program manager, to answer some of these questions.

This interview, conducted at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, has been lightly edited for clarity.

Ars: How is the Space Launch System rocket and launch pad looking a couple of months after Artemis II?

Jeremy Parsons: The mobile launcher is honestly in great shape after the launch, so the modifications we did between (Artemis) I and II were highly, highly successful. We rolled back a couple of weeks after launch, and two things are kind of going on in parallel right now.

The boosters have arrived at what we call the rotation processing surge facility, so they’re being prepped and ready for stacking—so rotation, all that kind of stuff. And then on the mobile launcher, there were a couple of areas of damage, and we’ve got like 90-something percent of it done right now. There are a couple of areas in the flame hole that they’re re-welding, and we want to get that work done before we start stacking boosters. As a general rule, we don’t want to weld with the propellant there. So all of that’s looking to finish up [in the] early July time frame. I expect us to be stacking in July.

Ars: What is the plan for testing the SLS rocket? Will you perform a wet dress rehearsal on the rocket before putting Orion on top?

Parsons: As you saw in Artemis I and II, we had issues with the cryogenic seals—those go through what is called the tail service mast umbilicals. We’re in the process of redesigning those and implementing new ones for this mission. Part of what we want to do is… what we call a short-stack tanking or wet dress rehearsal. Basically, you get the boosters and the core stage on, [and] you complete all the thermal protection systems. We then would put a cover on top of the core stage, and we’d roll out in that configuration. Then we tank it up and make sure the seals are tight.

Ars: You’re flying Artemis III without an ICPS upper stage because you don’t need the performance to reach low-Earth orbit. But you do need a second stage simulator. What’s the status of that?

Parsons: That, to me, is really cool. It’s called a spacer, and we already have the design done. Metal is already being bump-formed at United Launch Alliance, and then we’re going to weld it in-house at Marshall Space Flight Center. We expect it to show up at Kennedy Space Center no later than December, and then we’ll stack Orion on top of that. We’re in really good shape with that, and I’m pretty psyched with the progress.

Ars: So it sounds like the rocket and Orion should be good to go by mid-2027. Let’s talk about the other parts, the two lunar landers and their launch vehicles. Starting with Blue Origin, you called the prototype lander they’re flying for Artemis III a “lander test article” during your remarks today. What does that mean, exactly?

Parsons: It’s in between Mk 1 and Mk 2. It’s the same lunar crew module, which is really the most important aspect—same avionics, same flight software, so we’re going to get all of that component testing done. This will be the first production article of the lunar crew module, so we’re also going to have the ECLSS system (environmental control and life support).

The primary differences between this test article and the final lander will be the BE-7 engines, so you’re not going to have cryogenics on this test. What we’re going to use is storable propellants and a reaction control system because they don’t need the big thrust that’s needed to go to and from the Moon. That also gives us some time to really dial in what we call the dual-launch campaign. That’s going to be something to really highly choreograph as we go into the Artemis IV missions and beyond.

Blue Origin’s Blue Moon MK1 lander, seen in the center, is taller than NASA’s Apollo lunar lander, currently the largest spacecraft to have landed on the Moon. Blue Moon MK2 is even larger, but all three landers are dwarfed in size by Space X’s Starship.

Ars: Can the Blue Origin lander for Artemis III be launched on the existing 7×2 variant of the New Glenn rocket?

Ars: You and other NASA officials expressed a lot of confidence in New Glenn being ready to launch this vehicle next year, even after the pad explosion a couple of weeks ago. Is there a decision point at which you have to make a go-or-no-go call on whether to fly the Artemis III test lander on New Glenn or to consider other rockets?

Ars: Like if you get to October or November of this year, and Blue Origin’s launch pads for New Glenn are nowhere near ready.

Parsons: I think you’ve heard from Dave Limp, CEO of Blue Origin, and Jeff Bezos, and they are all in. The other thing to take into account is they had already started their second pad, so they’re about a year into that development timeframe. It’s going to be a dual path. They’re really getting in and clearing out SLC-36 right now, and a lot of the key hardware is in really good shape.

That being said, we’re going to be working with them hand in hand every single day, and we are bringing every assessment to bear. Like, if I needed to fly on another vehicle, what would that look like? What are the technical changes? So I would say all of that is in parallel. I want to be careful, though, because the Blue team is confident and is moving forward. We’re looking at this from a broader risk perspective. And how do we ensure both diversity of architecture, diversity of our capabilities, and keeping something flying in 2027?

Ars: Just to be clear, the Blue lander for Artemis III could fly on an alternative launch vehicle such as Vulcan or Falcon Heavy?

Parsons: Yes. The fairing size is part of what can drive that.

Ars: How important for the lunar landing missions is it for Blue Origin to fly the smaller Mk 1 lander to gain confidence in the BE-7 engines and propulsion system?

Parsons: They’ve been putting the BE-7 engine through a ton of test time. And when you look at the broader test campaign, with what we will do with the Earth orbit rendezvous mission of the lander test article and the uncrewed demo [Blue Origin test landing on the Moon], you’re buying down almost all of the reasonable risk you can for a lunar mission.

We actually mapped out every objective—everything that needs to go right, what are your failure scenarios?—and that Earth orbit rendezvous mission buys down a lot of the things we weren’t getting with the uncrewed landing. I think between those two, you can have confidence in saying we can go land. That being said, the more performance, the more data points you get, the more witnesses, if you will, with the Mk 1 landers, will only give you confidence in the systems and help you refine it. But I would not consider it a prerequisite, let’s put it that way.

Ars: As part of the Blue Origin architecture, there are some transfer stages used to push the lander out to the Moon. What are those, and are you going to be able to test them?

Parsons: They’re leveraging a lot of similar designs from Mk 1 all the way to Mk 2. Ultimately, I would suggest talking to John Couluris [leader of Blue Origin’s lunar program] about some of those details. [Editor’s note: Believe me, dear reader, we have tried].

In this case, you would have three transfer stages and then the mission article for the actual lunar landing. This is what we call the Boots Acceleration 2028 architecture, and really, they’re optimizing it around hardware that’s built, so they have a lot of common hardware between the transfer stages, the Mk 1, and the Mk 2 vehicles. That allows us to really ramp up production more than anything.

Ars: It’s clear that New Glenn and Blue Origin have really become essential to NASA and its plans not just for Artemis landings, but also the Moon Base initiative. How much of a gut punch was it for the pad to be destroyed a couple of weeks ago?

Parsons: If you look at the history of new development of launch vehicles, this isn’t uncommon. So was it a gut punch? Absolutely. But we’re moving forward. I know a lot of the Blue Origin team and how hard they’re working. I think it is a good opportunity for them to emerge from this better.

What we’re actually going to end up with is two pads capable of the 9×4 [larger version of the New Glenn rocket] in a shorter period of time. For me, when I step back and talk to the team, it wasn’t so much a gut punch. What we are doing is very much pushing the envelope of anything that’s been done before. We have to be confident in our procedures and our engineering and what we’re doing, and we have to test like you fly.

There was not a payload on that vehicle because this was a static fire test. That’s why they implement some of these things. I was on the phone with Blue Origin leadership that night, all the next day, all through the weekend, and I didn’t at any point see people step back and say, “Let me just lick my wounds.” It was like, what are we doing? How can we help? How do we move forward? I was actually really, really impressed by it.

Ars: And then there’s Starship. Unlike the Blue Moon lander, you’re not sending astronauts inside Starship. There won’t be any life support. I have to admit I was surprised by that. Tell me about the decision-making process that led you to that outcome.

Parsons: Correct, so with Starship, we are going to dock. I will tell you a couple of things I’m most worried about from a testing perspective, things that we’re not going to get with the uncrewed demo [Starship test landing on the Moon].

One is integrated stack control. You have a very large Starship vehicle, and [a] much smaller Orion. Also, your avionics flight software is always tricky to integrate. You can test on the ground, but until you’re up there commanding, those are things that you really want to check out. So those two things are some of the biggest bangs for the buck that we can get with this test.

Blue will launch first. I think we’re going to get even more of the test objectives we’re really looking for there. Because if you look at your major risk for a lunar landing, there’s the long-term ECLSS support—how does it perform in this crew cabin with two crew? And there’s software-integrated stack control. It is much better to do that in low-Earth orbit than it is four plus days away.

So we looked at what each provider could do in the time frame, what they were offering, what it would take in order to accomplish more. And then we said this set of objectives really buys down our risk for a 2028 landing, and it doesn’t perturb their entire development flow as well.

Ars: Can you talk about the orbital parameters of the mission, like altitude and inclination?

Parsons: Artemis III will fly at a -33 degree inclination. We’re flying a circular orbit, and we’re still working through all of the final mission parameters. So right now… we’re targeting below 250 nautical miles (287 miles, or 463 km). We’re doing all the fine-tuning analysis on Orion with thermal, power, what your beta angle cutouts look like, all of those things.

You have a lot more launch opportunities than you do for a lunar mission based off all that. What we are trading against that is MMOD [orbital debris] bands. So you go above 242 nautical miles, and you run into certain constellations, potential MMOD. And then when we looked at other higher orbits, like similar to what we flew for the initial ICPS rendezvous operations with Artemis II, then you start running into different MMOD and radiation concerns. The sweet spot will be probably below 250 nautical miles, probably in the 230s range. Both Blue and Starship can reach that in a single launch.

Ars: Thank you very much for your time. I genuinely want to wish you good luck on all of this. None of it is easy, and we’ll be watching with interest.

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Key Takeaways

• We managed to glean some interesting details about the Artemis III mission

• “I was on the phone with Blue Origin leadership that night, all the next day, all through the weekend

• On Tuesday, NASA announced the crew for the Artemis III mission, which is scheduled to be flown no earlier than summer 2027

• The presentation, although informative, still left open key questions about the landers’ readiness and what exactly they’ll look like

• This interview, conducted at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, has been lightly edited for clarity