NASA Says Artemis 1 Moon Mission was a Complete Success After Initial Assessment - Ready for Crewed Landing?

NASA's highly anticipated and long-delayed Artemis 1 mission was able to exceed all expectations. The space agency announced on the mission's initial assessment that the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket operated smoothly as planned.

This success may just be poetic justice for Artemis 1 since it had to delay its initial launches several times due to glitches and tropical storms.

Simply Eye-watering

"The first launch of the Space Launch System rocket was simply eye-watering," Mike Sarafin, Artemis mission manager, said in a news release from NASA.

Sarafin notes that even though Orion's mission is still ongoing, they have learned that the rocket's system operated as designed and expected.

The initial assessment is significant as Artemis 1 was sent to the moon to prepare to land humans on the lunar surface in the future and establish a long-term presence there.

The rocket and spacecraft were able to travel over 27 miles from their launch site at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and achieve a speed of about 4,000 mph in a matter of two minutes before the separation of boosters.

This was made possible by the twin solid rocket booster motors, responsible for producing more than 7 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, achieving their performance target, as per NASA.

None of the booster's subsystems, including its avionics and steering thrust vector control system, experienced any problems.

Analysis reveals that the rocket's core stage and four RS-25 engines, which used the stage's 735,000 gallons of propellants in just over eight minutes, exceeded all expectations both during launch and in the last few seconds leading up to liftoff.

How Fast was Orion?

The gigantic Moon rocket launched Orion at a speed of roughly 17,500 mph within about three miles of its intended orbital altitude of 975 by 16 nautical miles, which was well within the projected range needed for the mission.

The ascension of the rocket and the software in orbit both worked as predicted, according to NASA's analysis.

The mission's intermediate cryogenic propulsion stage, the rocket's upper stage that made two burns to raise Orion's orbit, also went off without a hitch.

In its more than 50 years of operation, the upper stage's single RL-10 engine, which has successfully propelled missions to every planet in the solar system and into interstellar space, broke the record for the longest single burn ever.

It burned for more than 18 minutes to precisely launch Orion on its journey to the moon. Overall, performance was off by less than 0.3 percent, according to Sarafin.

Engineers will conduct more in-depth evaluations of Space Launch System performance in the next few months as NASA continues to build components for Artemis 2 rocket and beyond.