Transcript
Chapter 1: Intro
Hello, it’s Scott Manley here. It’s been less than a week since the crew of Artemis 2 returned from their voyage around the moon, proving that the Orion spacecraft could indeed sustain humans in deep space and paving the way for future flights in the Artemis program.
And while Jared Isman has come in and made a bunch of changes and laid forth a well and ambitious vision for the coming years, the biggest question for me is what happens next? And the logical answer for the Artemis program would be Artemis 3. And that is indeed expected to happen next year. But actually, before then, we are expected to have maybe as many as four different uncrewed missions landing on the lunar surface carrying payloads as part of NASA’s commercial lunar payload services program. And we’ll talk about those.
What I really want to focus on first is what will it take to get SLS flying again? Does NASA and its partners have everything in place so that they can stick to their timeline and launch Artemis 3 next year? The plan being...
Chapter 2: The Plan For Artemis III
That Artemis 3 will fly into Earth orbit and rendezvous with the human landing system prototypes to verify some of the control capabilities to verify the life support. Uh, and the thing is right now we don’t know whether either of the HLS prototypes will be able to get into orbit with the capabilities needed for this kind of test. I mean, there’s a lot of talk in the news of the new space race between America and China, but the truth is the biggest space race right now is between the HLS providers SpaceX and Blue Origin and Artemis 3.
In an ideal world, by this point next year, we will have one or more landers in low Earth orbit ready for rendezvous.
Chapter 3: The Landers Question
In fact, they will have to be in the same orbital plane so that Artemis 3 can potentially visit both of them. But right now, this is the biggest uncertainty. We’ve only ever seen renders and mock-ups of hardware. We’ve not seen anything at Starbase that looks like it could be the beginnings of a lunar starship. And Blue Origin has yet to test the Mark 1 version of their Blue Moon lander, never mind the larger Mark 2 that they were planning to use for humans. We know that Mark 1 has come out of testing and is expected to be one of the clips missions. We don’t know how successful that is going to be.
Now, this 2027 goal may seem tough, but there is a silver lining in that neither of the spacecraft need to go beyond Earth orbit. They’re not needing to go to the moon. So, we don’t need to worry about the huge number of refueling flights that have been discussed for both of these spacecraft. Also, both companies very publicly pledged that they were aiming for the moon and they were going to work harder. And it sounds like there are some suggestions that they are working on which may expedite some of these problems.
There’s discussion that maybe there’s a way that Blue Origin could use their Mark 1 lander to put humans on the moon and therefore avoid having to test an entirely new lander design. There is also one other company running in this race for Artemis 3, and that is Axiom, who are providing the lunar spacesuits. Now, they would like to test these suits next year. And according to comments at the space symposium, Axiom are very much hoping to have tests of their suits happening next year, but they were primarily talking about testing these on the International Space Station where they have an airlock and they will be able to actually take them out on an EVA. But having them ready for Artemis 3 would certainly be very nice because then they could actually test operating these suits inside the spacecraft which are landing on the moon.
Chapter 4: And now....
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Chapter 5: But Isn’t SLS The Slow Part?
But look, I hear you say the thing that has historically taken the longest amount of time for the Artemis flights has been SLS and Orion. The very hardware that Congress has been requiring gets used on these missions. Is NASA in a position to put together Artemis 3 and have it launch almost a year before the original Artemis 3 date as of earlier this year? Well, let’s consider all the parts that make up the SLS launch system. Starting with the launch platform. Now, we know that there was some damage to it, but we weren’t very specific. I’m hoping it’s not like the two years worth of repairs that were needed after the previous flight. But as I understand it, after the previous flight, they made a number of upgrades to make the launchpad more robust. And I’m sure that it’ll be ready once the rest of the hardware starts getting shipped in.
So we about the booster segments. We know that the solid boosters are starting to get moved into Kennedy via the, you know, the train. So those segments are starting to appear down there and those will be one of the first things stacked. The booster core now that is scheduled for rollout in a NASA social event from the assembly facility on 420. However, that item getting rolled out and put on the barge is only about 80% of the rocket. The other 20% is the aft section with the engines. So, the aft section is already in Kennedy. Once the booster gets there, it will have to be mated to that, assembled, and then the engines will have to move in. Now the engines we know are still being tested at Stennis and they are expected to be shipped to Kennedy by about July of this year. And then once they get there, those are going to have to be integrated onto the core.
Now for Artemis Flight 2, the booster core was rolled into the vehicle assembly building in December of 2024. And if you remember, they weren’t ready for flight until a year later. They’re going to have to compress that timeline just a little bit if they’re starting in July and need to launch in early 2027.
Now, on top of that, you have the launch vehicle stage adapter, which narrows the rocket down so it can accept the interim cryogenic propulsion stage, the upper stage that sits on top of that. And then on top of that sits the Orion stage adapter. And these parts are all already built. And that might sound like a good thing, and it is a good thing, but there is the extra wrinkle that the change from Artemis 3 to be a lunar mission to being an Earth orbit mission...
Chapter 6: Changes Needed For Artemis III
Suddenly means that maybe we don’t actually need that upper stage. The upper stage on SLS is comically undersized. That’s why it’s the interim cryogenic propulsion stage because they were planning on having a much bigger stage. And this means that the core booster is more than capable of getting the ICPS and the Orion spacecraft into orbit without them having to do any of the work. And so this led me to speculate what NASA could do with a fully fueled stage that was in low Earth orbit. If it separated from the Orion spacecraft and it had some payloads in it because it is designed to carry some cubesats in there, it could send those cubesats to anywhere in the solar system. It has something like 9 km/s of delta V. It could send that hardware to interstellar space. And so when Jared Isaacman was asked about this, he said, “Oh, actually, it’s possible we fly this thing without using an ICPS. It’s possible we do something else.” So, the mission hasn’t been fully defined at this point. And I fully expect that they are waiting to get an idea of what the, you know, the HLS providers are going to be able to offer. And so there’s a real possibility that they choose to keep this mission in low Earth orbit. Therefore, they don’t need that upper stage, which means they could save it and so they would have one more Block 1 SLS available if they needed it.
Chapter 7: The ICPS Question
And that seems like a prudent decision given that we don’t know how long it will take to adapt Vulcan’s upper stage to SLS. But then that adds the complication that they were only planning three flights in this configuration. And so they have to get hardware for a fourth flight. Now, the launch vehicle adapter and the Orion stage adapter that sit either side of this stage, those are both made at Marshall Space Flight Center. And I know, as I understand it, they’d finish making them in 2024. The production hardware has been idle maybe a year, but I’m sure it’s possible for them to, you know, kick off another one of those. But the ICPS, on the other hand, that is basically, as I’ve said, it’s a Delta 4 upper stage. And I know that one was finished in 2023 because I got taken on a tour of ULA’s factory in Decatur, Alabama. And I remember them pointing at this and saying that is the last ICPS for SLS. At this point, they’d built all the hardware they ever needed for Delta 4. They’d built all the hardware that needed for SLS. They had no need for that production hardware. So, I’m sure at this point it’s been completely shut down and replaced. So, somebody would have to find a replacement for this.
Ideally, one which is structurally qualified to fly on SLS and actually they did build such a thing. There was a structural test article which was built. This was back in 2016. It was all like the same as an ICPS. It was structurally correct. It ran through all the tests to show that the stage worked. It didn’t have an engine. They could probably use that. Although it has been sitting out there and is, you know, seen a lot better days. So, what exactly happens here is something they’re going to need to figure out in the coming months. Now, above that, things get a little more certain. Again, the Orion spacecraft is already at Kennedy Space Center. However, it’s been, you know, getting ready with anticipation of launching in January 2028. That’s obviously not the case. They have to bring that forward a whole lot, but I don’t think that’ll be a huge problem. Also, the European service module, that’s already at the Cape. That’s already basically ready for integration. And on top of that, we have the launch escape system, the launch abort system. That is something which, you know, they were planning on keeping going forward. So I don’t anticipate there being any problems with that. So for Artemis 2, they began stacking in November of 2024 and they were pretty...
Chapter 8: Compare to Artemis II Timeline
Much finished by October of 2025. So that’s 11 months. They’re going to have to go a little faster this time. Now, I presume it’s going to take a couple of months to get the mobile launch platform, you know, repaired and ready to stack. But I expect that by the summer, we are going to be seeing the boosters and the core getting stacked.
And by then, we should also have a better idea about the exact plans for Artemis 3 because they’re going to need to pick a crew. And so that’ll mean for astronauts who have time to train up in Orion and SLS and operations on board, they’re going to need to have someone that can actually fly Orion and dock it. They’re going to need a Starship pilot. They’re going to need a Blue Origin, you know, Blue Moon pilot or expert. And then they’re going to need somebody that can test the space suits if that’s part of this mission. So the two crew members that are working with the HLS partners, they’re probably going to have to be assigned now and getting embedded with, you know, SpaceX or Blue Origin to make sure that they are working towards understanding what they need for this flight. And I will be really interested to see who they end up picking for this mission.
And of course, in the meantime, anyone that’s built parts for SLS is going to have to start building the parts for Artemis 4, Artemis 5. They need to keep this like a production line going. NASA has stated that they would like to fly two different lunar landing flights in 2028, but I think that we would be happy if we even got one. And even if SLS hardware is ready, of course, the HLS providers, they need to do their landing demo on the moon and they potentially could reuse that lander or they could fly another lander up and then go through the entire refueling cycle. There’s a lot of work for the HLS providers to do if they are aiming for this 2028 landing. And in the meantime, we do expect a number of unmanned payloads landing on the moon.
Chapter 9: Other NASA Missions To The Moon
So the next one we expect as part of the commercial lunar payload services should be Blue Moon Mark 1. We don’t know when that is. We thought that it could be actually flight 3 of New Glenn, but that’s going to be, you know, a Space Mobile’s hardware. Anyway, I’m not clear what payloads will be carried on Blue Moon’s debut flight. I know that NASA has given them a retroreflector and their SCALP payload, which is basically, you know, a set of cameras that will look at the exhaust plume and how it interacts with the lunar surface.
I don’t see if there’s anything else. I think that this is going to be primarily used by Blue Origin to prove that their lander technology works. They might carry some payloads to demonstrate human lander technologies or something, but I don’t think there’s anything else coming from NASA or other partners. And you know, later in 2027, Blue Origin will have the opportunity to use the Blue Moon lander to put the Viper rover on the surface. And if you remember, the Viper rover was actually cancelled because of budget issues, but now it’s getting a chance to actually fly because it would be stupid to not let the rover you’ve just built sit on the ground and do nothing.
Also expected to fly in 2026 is Intuitive Machine’s third flight. Again, hoping that this one will stay standing. We will have Astrobotics flight off a Griffin spacecraft. That was the one that was supposed to land the Viper rover, but Viper got pulled because it was more expensive because of the Griffin lander. And now they are carrying a rover from Astrolab, the Flip Rover, which is, you know, developed by a private company. And then currently aiming for December of 2026, we have Blue Ghost 2 from Firefly, hoping to land on the far side of the moon, hoping to repeat those amazing images and be successful for the second time.
Now, somewhere in the middle of all this, we hope that NASA will be assigning new CLIPS payload because they want to start building out that lunar base. They want to start putting the stuff on the surface. And it’ll be interesting to see what parts of the Gateway end up being moved to the lunar surface and what parts end up having to be completely thrown away or re-engineered or put in storage. And now beyond all this, NASA needs to be looking at what happens after Artemis 5. I’m pretty sure the SLS support is still there in Congress.
And so I fully expect that if they are able to get the Centaur 5 upper stage running on SLS that they can start to turn this into an operational program that can fly a little faster without spending nearly as much money. We’ve seen a lot of changes over the last few months and I fully expect to see more changes coming down the pipeline, but most of all I really hope to see humans walking on the moon in 2028. I’m Scott Manley. Fly safe.
Maybe they can sign up another multi-hued cornucopia of "girl boss" passengers for another Federally funded carnival ride.
