Artemis II Mission: Delayed to return to the Moon

The path to the Moon has not been and will not be an easy task. Between March 6 and 11, a new launch window opened for the NASA could carry out the expected mission Artemis II. However, this has been postponed again. A month ago, a leak of liquid hydrogen in the tanks of the SLS launch rocket caused takeoff to be suspended, when it already seemed imminent. Now, after a successful dress rehearsal carried out on Thursday, February 19, it was thought that we were close to seeing four astronauts orbit the Moon, for the first time in 53 years, but a new problem has once again postponed the launch.

As Isaacman himself explained, helium—being an inert gas—is used to purge the SLS engines and pressurize the LH2 (liquid hydrogen) and LOX (liquid oxygen) cryogenic fuel tanks as they are unloaded in those dizzying seconds and minutes that follow the launch. A failure in this system could be catastrophic.

Therefore, seeking to put a cold shoulder to the situation, the NASA administrator described these incidents as common in the space race. “During the 1960s,” he recalled, “when NASA achieved what most believed impossible, and what has never been repeated since, there were many setbacks. A historical example is that Neil Armstrong He spent less than 11 hours in space on Gemini 8, before his mission ended prematurely due to a technical problem. Just over three years later, he became the first man to walk on the Moon.”

“Safety always comes first for any mission that NASA carries out, so many verifications are carried out,” Peruvian aerospace engineer Rosa Ávalos-Warren told us a few weeks ago, who at the end of 2022 led the communications system for the Artemis I mission. In her opinion, each mission has its critical part, which is why window periods for the launch are evaluated and it is important to go step by step. “It was a mission in which so many people participated and in different states and it meant a lot because it was a critical part that paved the way for the development of Artemis II. So, the rocket systems and also the spacecraft could be verified very well… There is like a sequence and a path that takes us to Artemis II. Therefore, having supported Artemis I for me was very valuable, because we are taking humanity back to the Moon and it is also such an important part, because we are experiencing and seeing, later, the jump from the Moon to Mars.”

Regarding the possibilities of the launch of the mission, she commented: “There are different window periods that are being evaluated in their entirety, so (the launch) depends on those dress rehearsals.” Currently, Ávalos-Warren works in the Astrophysics division of NASA, as an executive programmer on missions related to the telescope system such as the Hubble and the James Webb. “In January,” he said, “we just launched three missions that seek to analyze the different exoplanets (located beyond our solar system). In itself, the astrophysics division seeks to answer the big questions about how the universe works, its origin, the evolution of galaxies, stars and how we got here.”

“The ship has a system that, in milliseconds, could eject astronauts in the event of an emergency.”

Rosa Avalos-Warren | Aerospace engineer

But beyond these questions about deep space, reaching our only satellite is still, in the 21st century, a complicated task. You might think that if half a century ago it was possible to walk on the Moon, now with more sophisticated technology everything should be simpler, but the reality and objectives are different. In 1969 there was the pressure of a space race with the Soviet Union and the idea was just to get there. Now, the Artemis project has greater scope and objectives: monitoring resources and installing a base on the lunar surface.

“In all this time, technology has improved, but there are also physical limits that have to be overcome, and above all there is the issue of safety, since human lives are being launched into space,” says Peruvian astronomer Erick Meza, who is a researcher at Conida, the National Commission for Aerospace Research and Development. Therefore, sending a ship to the Moon presents certain critical aspects to overcome.