- January 19, 2024
- Posted by: admin
- Category: Emilio Cozzi
The technical reasons for the delay in the United States’ lunar program must be seen in a context and conditions very different from the Apollo era. Returning to the Moon is no joke, especially if the plan is to stay.
DI EMILIO COZZI
NASA’s announcement on January 9th was expected by many, almost everyone: the first crew to make the journey from Earth to the Moon in over half a century, with the Artemis 2 mission, will not launch at the end of 2024, but not before September 2025. The next human landing on the lunar surface, currently scheduled with Artemis 3, will not happen before September 2026. Everything is pushed back by at least ten months. Returning to the Moon in the 21st century seems, paradoxically, more complicated compared to what was done in the 1960s. Beyond appearances and what seems or is said, the truth is that the current adventure is much more complex for many different reasons.
Firstly, regarding funding, the financial commitment from the U.S. government, which during the Cold War was colossal: it absorbed 5% of federal resources, while today it is between 0.5% and 1%. The geopolitical conditions, significantly different now, are no less important: having achieved strategic supremacy in 1969, today power is measured not so much by who lands on the Moon first, but more by commercial, technical-scientific returns, implicit military and cyber capabilities. In strict financial terms, our natural satellite seems indeed much further away.
Not that there are no contenders for a new ‘race’ this time, quite the contrary: the most formidable, at least from a Western and American-centric perspective, to be precise, is Xi Jinping’s China. From this viewpoint, the challenge is similar to that with Nikita Khrushchev’s Soviet Union. As mentioned, the budget is vastly different: according to an analysis by the independent Planetary Society, the Apollo program, and generally the effort to go to the Moon, cost American taxpayers 280 billion dollars in total (adjusted for inflation in 2020).
They were ‘hit-and-run’ missions, with a maximum stay of three days on the surface. Today’s objectives are different: the Artemis program will cost 93 billion dollars by 2025, and although no one has returned to the Moon yet, it’s a matter of concept as well as strategy (apparently not perfect). NASA Administrator Bill Nelson was right when he said in a press conference that ‘we will return to the Moon in a way we have never done before.’
Artemis Delays
Amit Kshatriya, NASA’s associate deputy administrator for the Moon to Mars program – of which Artemis is a part – listed the reasons for postponing the lift-off of the next lunar crews: firstly, the unexpected erosion of Orion capsule’s heat shield during Artemis 1’s re-entry in December 2022. Known to the engineers who have been working on it for a year, hoping to understand the causes by spring, Kshatriya said.
Then the emerging criticalities: problems with the life support system of the capsule designated for Artemis 3, the first crewed mission set to land on the Moon. Inspections of the hardware for the spacecraft revealed a design flaw in the circuits that operate the valves. ‘The valve electronics affect many parts of the spacecraft’s life support system, including the carbon dioxide removal systems,’ he explained.
Therefore, although the valve components for Artemis 2 had passed checks and were already installed, Kshatriya stated that NASA found it unacceptable to use that hardware; replacement was necessary.
A third problem is related to Orion’s abort system, which allows the capsule to be propelled away in case of anomalies during launch. ‘Safety is our absolute priority – Nelson concluded – to give the Artemis teams the way to deal with challenges related to early development, operations, and integration, we will give more time to Artemis 2 and 3.’
And then, yes, there’s everything else.
The Private Sector and the South Pole Challenge
There’s a program so different from Apollo that any comparison seems inappropriate. As noted by physicist and former president of the Italian Space Agency, Roberto Battiston, interviewed by Repubblica, “the complexity of the Artemis project is much greater than that of the Apollo missions. In the 1960s they conceived were expeditions aimed at very brief stays of astronauts on the lunar soil before bringing them back to Earth. Today, however, the goal is to go to the Moon and stay there: thus, it is necessary to design more powerful rockets capable of transporting people and equipment. It is especially for this latter aspect that NASA has turned to SpaceX”.
SpaceX, in many ways, is the elephant in the lunar room: waiting for the third orbital launch attempt of Starship – which we have written about more extensively here – and after the explosions that marked the end of the first two launches, which occurred while the spaceship was still over the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, it seemed clear to many that Elon Musk’s company would not be able to deliver to NASA a vehicle certified for landing on the Moon by the end of 2025, the original date planned for Artemis 3. The months-long halt following the first lift-off, when serious damage to the Boca Chica ramp prompted a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) investigation and many protests from local residents and environmentalists, was a significant setback.
As if those mentioned were not enough, there is another piece of the puzzle: to complete its lunar task, it is planned that Starship will refuel in orbit, as most of its propellant will be consumed in the effort to overcome Earth’s gravity and carry its enormous bulk into orbit (it is the largest and heaviest spacecraft ever built, with a thousand cubic meters of internal capacity).
The number of launches required is in the “teens” – between 13 and 19 – admitted SpaceX’s Vice President of Customer Operation and Integration, Jessica Jensen, also pressed by Bill Nelson for an answer. How many exactly, she specified, is not yet known, as there are various configurations and it depends on how much fuel can be transferred at each refueling. The spacecraft, the crew Starship and the tanker, will have to approach and dock in orbit, many times. This is one of the biggest differences compared to the Apollo launches: dry, Starship has a mass of about 100 tons, well beyond the fully loaded Apollo spacecraft. When it launches, it weighs 5,000 tons on the ramp, more than double the Space Shuttle. Once refueled in orbit, in its Moonship version, capable of landing on the Moon, it will be able to carry up to a hundred tons of cargo to the Moon. In other words, they are two different categories of vehicles: Apollo is a compact car, Starship a tractor-trailer.
Add to this the fact that, as deduced from the press conference, even the private Axiom Space, which has to design and test the new pressurized space suits (for extravehicular activities, capable of supporting astronauts in vacuum conditions), would not have been able to deliver them by the deadline. This means that at least Artemis 3 would have been delayed anyway, even without the postponement of the previous mission.
Never Attempted Before
Beyond what has been discussed so far, one must not forget the necessity to send materials and supplies ahead of Artemis 3, to be ready for the first explorers, and the intention to build a space station, the Lunar Gateway, to be assembled in lunar orbit, which has also been delayed to 2028 for the launch of the first module. This is the element where a good part of the European, Canadian, and Japanese contribution to the lunar adventure comes together, in addition to the service module of the Orion capsule.
Also, the chosen destination influences the program’s timeline: the mission will head to the South Pole, to search for ice mines in perpetual shadow at the bottom of craters – far from a simple walk.
Communication and movement during missions, which will initially last at least a week, will require satellites in orbit to bridge with Earth.
As Nelson said, these are all challenges never attempted before. The added complication is that, should something go wrong up there, the return to Earth could be at risk. While materials and technology have made giant strides in fifty years, the risks of such an adventure far from our Planet have remained virtually the same.
A safe return is something that NASA and the United States can no longer afford not to guarantee. When Alan Shepard, the first American flown in space, settled aboard the Redstone rocket that would send him beyond the atmosphere, the chances of it exploding on launch were 57.5%. When Apollo 11 with Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins left in July 1969, their survival chances were estimated at 50%. That’s why, well before they took off, William Safire, the presidential ghostwriter, wrote for Richard Nixon the speech to deliver to the Nation in case of a “Moon Disaster.”
Today, no one, humanly and politically, wants to bear the burden of heroes fallen in the daring lunar venture, sixty years after the first, historic landing. It would be a catastrophe and an ignominy, made all the more unbearable by the many delays accumulated and the controversial development choices of the program.
New Adventure, Old Approach
Many, almost all, expected that for NASA returning to the Moon would be a simple, if not trivial, task.
For the Artemis program, the Space Launch System (or SLS) was designed and built, a new, very powerful launch system whose delays and costs have sparked fierce controversies. Many critics call it “the Senate Launch System,” due to the decision to have it built with an outdated concept and methodology, to safeguard jobs, to reuse “leftover” elements of the Space Shuttle.
The crew of Artemis 3 will depart aboard the SLS in the Orion capsule, then, with a rendezvous, two astronauts will board the Moonship and descend to the surface. A week later, the crew will ascend to lunar orbit and return to Earth in the Orion. In subsequent missions, from 2028 onwards, the orbital base will be the Lunar Gateway, a port to dock at, transfer, conduct and prepare experiments.
All of this will serve to build the foundations of the first human outpost on the surface of another world. And, sooner or later, a colony.
This alone is enough to consider Apollo and Artemis profoundly different twins: the difference between them is like that between a pleasure trip abroad and building a house there.