Full Overview of Artemis I Moon Mission

it's been 50 years since humans set foot on the moon entire Generations were born after this historic accomplishment but Humanity has kept its eyes on the sky and vowed to return this week marks the end of the beginning of that Journey the completion of Artemis 1 sending a human-rated capsule around the Moon and Back Again with Orion safely back on Earth let's look back at this amazing accomplishment and Ponder what comes next it feels kind of surreal doesn't it that we're talking now and the Orion capsule has returned from the Artemis 1 Mission and yet here we are it's over I think I can finally breathe a sigh of relief for those of you who haven't been watching the day-to-day operations of the mission all of the politics involved I thought it'd be a good time to give a summary of the entire Artemis 1 Mission I'll go into the history of the Artemis program the constellation program that led into it all of the events that led up to the launch of Artemis 1 the mission in itself all of the highlights and the recovery the return and what comes next for Humanity's Return To The Moon all right let's get into it after the Apollo missions returned and the last crew of Apollo 17 came back to Earth there were no more missions planned to go to the moon and it was expensive it was a tremendous technological achievement but it was done the Soviets weren't able to do it it's time to move on to the next challenge and NASA turned its direction to the Space Shuttle and then eventually the International Space Station keeping its sights on low earth orbit and there were no plans to go beyond low earth orbit for a while with the International Space Station constructed with the space shuttle operating NASA set its sights higher and under the George W Bush Administration back in the early 2000s they announced that they were going to be returning to the moon and the mission was called the constellation program and it was going to consist of two major spacecraft one was called the Aries five and this was going to be a heavy lift vehicle similar to the existing space launch system the other was called Ares one it would be smaller safer it would carry the crew capsule that would then deliver the astronauts to orbit where they would meet up with the larger capsule that would take them to the Moon unfortunately building an entirely New Moon rocket system was expensive and unlike the International Space Station they didn't have the partnership of their International Partners Russia wasn't working with them maybe the Europeans would get involved at some point but there were no concrete plans to work together NASA was going to be doing this on their own but the main purpose of the constellation program was to maintain the workforce the all of the contractors and employees that are worked on the Apollo program were transitioned over to working on the space shuttle and as the space shuttle started to wrap up they needed somewhere else to go and so there was the development of the constellation program and you're probably not going to be surprised to hear but the project was late it was over budget and in 2010 it was canceled during the Obama Administration but when I say canceled the destination was canceled Humanity was no longer going to return to the moon but they were still going to build a heavy lift vehicle and it was changed to be called the space launch system where this was going to go was still not entirely certain NASA had developed several targets for where the space launch system could go it could carry a crew of astronauts to an asteroid it could launch heavier robotic spacecraft like the upcoming Europa Clipper Mission it would just give the United States the heavy lift capacity that had lost at the end of the Saturn era of course as administrations change goals change and in 2017 we got the announcement from the Trump Administration that there was going to be a return to the Moon that the space launch system would be adapted to carry humans to the moon and as part of this announcement we got three major phases we got the Artemis 1 Mission which would send an uncrewed capsule out around the moon and return it to Earth Artemis 2 would send a crew of humans on a trip around the moon and return to Earth similar to the Apollo 8 mission and Artemis 3 would be that mission that brings humans back to the moon for the first time in 50 years Landing in 2024 now come on let's be serious right even though the announced date was going to be 2024 there was really no way they were going to be able to meet that objective there were a lot of contracts that needed to be filled new technology Hardware that needed to be developed but still like a goal is good for focusing the mind and when I think about the reporting that we were doing over the last few years A lot of it was about how the space launch system was getting delayed the first test was going to be pushed back it got pushed back months years finally after many many tests many many delays in the end of 2022 we finally saw the first launch of the space launch system I'm like I don't want to go into all the details but there was like problems the wet dress rehearsal there was multiple hurricanes that bear down on the Space Coast the space launch system had to be carried back to the Vehicle Assembly Building and then back out to the launch pad it wasn't the perfect time leading up originally it was supposed to launch in September and it didn't finally launch until November and you know the costs of this rocket it pretty much 4 billion dollars a piece really starts to sink in when you think about what's on the line here but with all of those problems the rocket did lift off on the morning of Wednesday November 15th at 1 47 a.m Eastern Standard Time space launch system blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center and we had all been prepared and we'd seen simulations of what that's going to look like seeing this rocket actually take off was mind-blowing it leapt off the pad in a way that other rocket systems just don't so much power and it shouldn't have been surprising right SLS has these two giant solid rocket boosters it has four rs-25 engines powering the core stage there's a lot of power on this rocket more power than Saturn V more power than the space shuttle it really flew and the entire launch was smooth we saw the solid rocket boosters detach at the right time we saw the rocket push through the maximum Dynamic pressure we saw the core stage separate and it extended the solar panels on the European service module and then the upper stage fired for 18 minutes putting the spacecraft on the right trajectory to go to the moon at that point it also deployed 10 cubesats that were in a ring that connected the upper stage and the spacecraft and we'll get more on that in a little bit and then about eight hours after that Orion performed another bird that put it on course with a lunar flyby for November 21st and I've gotta say watching this launch Everything went perfect I was nervous and I've never really had a chance to celebrate because I was expecting something to fail this rocket had never been flown before it had gone through two hurricanes it had been driven back and forth from the Vehicle Assembly Building to the launch pad it was amazing how smooth the entire process went on day five Orion entered the gravitational influence on the moon and on day six it made its first flyby of the moon coming within just 130 kilometers of the surface it then fired its thrusters picking up velocity to carry it on a really unique trajectory around the Moon as it was passing the Moon it flew almost directly overhead three of the Apollo Landing sites and then it flew behind the moon and we lost contact with it for a while so then Orion coasted out to the highest point away from the Moon on day 13 it was about 432 000 kilometers away from the earth about 65 000 kilometers away from the Moon and this was the farthest a human rated spacecraft had ever flown that's not entirely true the Apollo 10 capsule Snoopy is probably an orbit around the sun somewhere so it's gone farther then on day 16 it fired its engines again putting it on a trajectory to come back to the moon now while it was on this flight the real purpose of Orion was tested out there were many different techniques and technologies that NASA was looking to practice during this mission to make sure that they would all work when humans were actually on board an Orion capsule for example they tested all the different thrusters on the capsule trying different modes of flying the spacecraft they kept track of all of the radiation sensors both on the exterior of the spacecraft as well as the radiation loads that the simulated astronauts were receiving as they were flying this far away from the Earth's protective magnetosphere it's just out of the star tracking system so that it would know where it was even if couldn't receive Telemetry information from Earth the spacecraft was equipped with 16 cameras it had essentially modified GoPros on the ends of the solar arrays as well as many cameras inside and outside the spacecraft and this allowed them to live stream almost the entire Mission so if you wanted you could just log in and watch out the window of the Orion capsule although like it wasn't very exciting most of the time but still like to know that you were actually watching the view from a spacecraft that was out beyond the distance of the Moon was pretty amazing and on day 18 it returned to the lunar sphere of influence once again it was out of contact with Earth for about four and a half hours on day 20 it made its second flyby of the Moon passing again within about 130 kilometers of the surface it fired its engine for about three and a half minutes to put it on course to return to Earth using the moon's gravity for a slingshot one other experiment that they tested both at the beginning and the end of the mission was a propellant test where they rotated the spacecraft to see how the propellants sloshed around inside both when the fuel tanks were full and when they were almost empty and this is actually really tricky to simulate on Earth under normal gravity it's only watching how this behaved in microgravity that they were able to confirm that the technology worked how they had expected by the end of the mission Orion had used less propellant than NASA's expecting it used about five thousand five hundred kilograms and still had about 1 000 kilograms in reserve it made one final measurement of the Van Allen belt as it passed through and this is important because we're approaching solar maximum and the amount of radiation that's reaching the Earth and interacting with the Van Allen belts changes over the sun's 11-year solar cycle the space weather is important for Missions like this and it's a little counter-intuitive when the sun is at its solar maximum it's putting out the most amount of radiation it actually Puffs out the heliosphere around the sun which helps to protect the solar system from cosmic radiation which is a more dangerous form of radiation but at the same time you can be more likely to have solar storms and flares and activity like that and so it was great for NASA to get a chance to be able to test out this environment as we're approaching solar maximum just before Orion reached the Earth's atmosphere it separated from the European space agency's service module which had supplied it with power and additional resources throughout the entire Mission now Orion was on its own it entered the atmosphere above the Pacific Ocean going about 40 000 kilometers per hour when you just compare this like orbital velocity is about 28 000 kilometers per hour so it's much faster falling down from the Moon into the Earth's atmosphere one of the coolest parts of this mission is they performed a skip technique this is where they actually bounced off of the atmosphere once using the aerodynamic shape of the capsule to provide lift that allowed it to bleed off a lot of its velocity before it actually came back into the atmosphere to perform its final descent temperatures outside the capsule reached 2 800 degrees Celsius now that's half the temperature of the Sun but twice as hot as lava and then the friction from the atmosphere slowed it down to just 480 kilometers per hour and then its parachutes took over to complete the landing when it finally hit the ocean it was going just 32 kilometers per hour now you might know but actually this was the second time that an Orion capsule was tested the first was launched into orbit a few years ago traveled around the earth and re-entered so they were pretty confident that the landing system was going to work and so on Sunday December 11th it landed in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Baja California the spacecraft floated in the ocean it was met by the USS Portland and brought on board for a return to Port the entire flight lasted for 25.5 days completing a 2.2 million kilometer journey and as an interesting coincidence this day matched exactly the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 17 moon landing which of course was the last time that humans set foot on the moon now that Orion is safely on the ground we can look back and see how the overall mission went and I've got to say it was almost close to perfect there was one part earlier on in the mission when NASA lost communication with the spacecraft for about 45 minutes that was a little unnerving but they're able to restore communication and then there were no more problems apart from the times when it went behind the moon which is what they were expecting the launch itself caused a lot of damage to the launch platform you can see these amazing pictures of the elevator doors that are designed to carry the astronauts up when they go back on the next Artemis they're gonna need new doors maybe a new elevator probably the biggest loss of the mission was the cubesats I mentioned earlier on that it released 10 cubesats onto the same trajectory off to the moon and within a few hours it was obvious that many of them had already gone offline another one went offline a few days later and at this point we're about half of the cubesats that were carried into space with Artemis one have gone offline and there were some really cool missions in there that I was really excited about there was a Japanese lunar lander there was NASA's Nia Scout send a solar sail to a near-earth asteroid neither of those are operational right now I mean technically they weren't part of the Artemis One mission they were ride sharing but clearly all of the delays going back and forth the Hurricanes like none of that was good for these tiny spacecraft now NASA has the Orion capsule in its hands and it's going to start digesting all of the discoveries that were made by the spacecraft there are going to be terabytes of data stored on its onboard hard drives flash drives from all of those cameras and so we're going to see a flood of data and results come onto the internet over the coming months and years we're going to learn how well the spacecraft performed compared to the design and that's really important when humans climb in for Artemis 2. and speaking of Artemis 2 the plan is for the next space launch system to blast off in 2024 but don't be surprised if it slips to 2025 there's a lot of things to do this will carry four astronauts on a mission around the Moon over the course of 21 days including one Canadian astronaut but no names yet it's going to fly around the earth twice to pick up speed and then take a free return trajectory around the moon and return to Earth so a different trajectory than the one that Artemis 1 took then comes Artemis 3. again scheduled for launch in 2025 but come on it's going to be delayed but this is the big one this is the time when humans come back to the Moon NASA has contracted SpaceX to supply a lunar lander version of Starship the spacecraft will be flying in a near rectilinear Halo orbit the same orbit that the Capstone Mission has been flying on and the upcoming lunar Gateway it's an orbit that allows astronauts to easily reach the South Pole of the Moon two astronauts will land at the South Pole of the Moon near these deposits of water ice that are believed to be at the bottoms of the permanently shadowed craters this is very important for the future sustainability of missions to the Moon you can extract water ice from the surface of the Moon you can use it for breathing for propellant for drinking water there's a lot of uses for water and so this is going to be a critical resource Artemis 3 is going to help figure out if this ice is there and if it's accessible to astronauts NASA's announced 13 potential Landing spots but we don't which one is going to be yet and beyond that the future is less clear NASA has announced that they have contracted with SpaceX to provide another lunar lander they've also opened up for bids from other companies to be able to provide lunar Landings for Artemis missions Beyond three and four but we don't know how many are going to be there and how many are going to be landing on the moon NASA is committed to at least Orion capsules to Artemis 8 and have committed to core stages to Artemis 6. so we don't know exactly what's going to happen but we know there will be at least six Artemis missions eight launches of Orion capsules so there are a lot of outstanding issues to be done before humans can return to the Moon there need to be entirely new space suits developed there need to be new equipment that can be used on the surface of the Moon by the astronauts experiments Rovers and other infrastructure to come along with them there's a long list of to-do items before we can see humans walk on the moon and hopefully stay on the moon eventually building a long-term lunar base there so I hope you enjoyed this gives you a big overview of everything that happened during the Artemis One mission I've got to say it feels kind of surreal to be standing here now on the other side of this Mission talking about the completion of Artemis 1 and Ryan it's been a long journey but I think this time it's gonna stick not only is NASA returning to the moon but there's a lot of other players you've got the Chinese that are developing their plans to eventually send humans over the next decade you've got various private missions including SpaceX which is saying that they're going to be able to send humans to the moon on Starship there are other private collaborations between other companies the European Space Agency is planning to build a lunar Village on the surface of the Moon so this time I think we're gonna stay but 2024 can't come soon enough with the launch of Artemis 2. I'm looking forward to it I hope you are too we've been covering the story pretty obsessively at Universe today so obviously we've got dozens probably hundreds of stories about the Artemis Vision at this point but you can also access links to other resources that I've put them all in the show notes down below you can get even more space news in my weekly email newsletter I send it out every Friday to more than 55 000 people I write every word there are no ads and it's absolute free subscribe at universetoday.com newsletter you can also subscribe to the universe Today podcast there you can find an audio version of all of our news interviews and Q and A's as well as exclusive content subscribe at universeto.com podcast or search for Universe today on Apple podcast Spotify or wherever you get your podcast a huge thanks to everyone who supports us on patreon and helps us stay independent thanks to all the interplanetary researchers the interstellar adventurers and the Galaxy Wanderers and a special thanks to Josh Schultz and Andrew M gross who support us at the master of the universe level all your support means the universe to us all right that was our overview of the Artemis Mission now if you want more updates on a regular basis you should come back subscribe to the channel we've got news every week questions and answer shows interviews with people behind the scenes in space and astronomy I think you really enjoy it so make sure you subscribe to the channel alright we'll see you next time

Channel: Fraser Cain

Views: 27,593

Keywords: universe today, fraser cain, space, astronomy, space news, astronomy news, nasa, artemis 1, aretmis, artemis i, moon mission, moon landing, going back to the moon, constellation program, orion, orion capsule, capstone, earthrise, nasa moon

Id: u5wNXtlZH_Q

Length: 20min 57sec (1257 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 14 2022