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Report signals concern for Artemis space missions | 3:04WKMG News 6 ClickOrlando | 436K subscribers | 7,082 views | May 10, 2024

A towering new rocket has taken flight, carrying what could be the first commercial lander to touch down on the moon — and the first lunar landing mission to launch from the United States since 1972. The Vulcan Centaur rocket, a never-before-flown model developed by United Launch Alliance, a joint venture by Boeing and Lockheed Martin, roared to life at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 2:18 a.m. ET Monday. The launch vehicle soared through space for nearly an hour, expending its fuel as it ripped away from Earth’s gravity and sent the lunar lander, called Peregrine, on...

A new report accuses the space agency of a lack of transparency regarding the cost of its SLS program.NASA has come under heat for the increasing cost of its Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, which space agency officials have finally admitted to being unsustainable and unaffordable, a new report revealed. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report on Thursday that heavily criticized NASA for its lack of transparency regarding the true cost of the SLS program, which has already gone $6 billion over budget. The SLS rocket launched on November 16, 2022 for the Artemis 1 mission, sending an...

Seven sorority sisters have sued the University of Wyoming for admitting a transgender woman into their house over claims she voyeuristically peeped at them while visibly aroused. The women, who were not named in the lawsuit, have sued the school, as well as their transgender sorority sister Artemis Langford, 21, who joined their chapter in September 2022. Langford, who is 6'2" and weighs 260lbs, will be moving into the Kappa Kappa Gamma (KKG) house alongside 50 other women. Although the 21-year-old currently lives outside of the home, the girls say she is often in their sorority house watching them and...

The Orion spacecraft has been secured in the well deck of the USS Portland. The ship will soon begin its trip back to U.S. Naval Base San Diego, where engineers will remove Orion from the ship in preparation for transport back to Kennedy Space Center in Florida for post-flight analysis. Upon Orion’s successful splashdown in the Pacific Ocean west of Baja California at 9:40 PST/12:40 EST Dec. 11, flight controllers in mission control at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston spent about two hours performing tests in open water to gather additional data about the spacecraft, including on its thermal...

NASA’s Orion capsule snaps a selfie, with the far side of the Moon in the background. Image: NASA NASA’s Orion spacecraft has made it past the Moon as part of the uncrewed Artemis I mission, firing its engines to pass within 81 miles of the lunar surface, and is operating with high accuracy. The spacecraft performed an outbound powered flyby burn yesterday, Monday, November 21st, completing its closest flyby. The engines “all worked perfectly,” said Judd Frieling, a flight director at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, in a press conference. With three trajectory correction burns performed, the spacecraft has now fired...

NASA’s Artemis program took an important step forward this weekend, with CAPSTONE finally reaching its destination—a near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO) around the Moon. The 55-pound cubesat will now test this promising orbit in preparation for the Gateway lunar space station. CAPSTONE, short for Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment, reached NRHO on Sunday, November 13, according to an Advanced Space press release. Later this week, the $33 million cubesat will attempt a pair of tiny clean-up maneuvers to confirm its placement in the lunar orbit. In addition to being the first human-built device to operate in NRHO,...

NASA... gears up for another attempt to get the Artemis I mission off the ground...November 14, with a 69-minute launch window that opens at 12:07 a.m. ET. The launch will stream live on NASA’s website. he rocket had been stowed away for weeks after issues with fuel leaks that thwarted the first two launch attempts and then a hurricane rolled through Florida, forcing the rocket to vacate the launchpad and head for safety. The Artemis team again is monitoring a storm that could be heading toward Florida, but officials felt confident to move ahead with rollout, according to Jim Free,...

While average Americans are excited the United States is planning to send people back to the moon through NASA’s Artemis project, the space agency’s inspector general said the cost is “unsustainable,” Fox News reported. NASA Inspector General Paul K. Martin predicted that the first four missions will cost $4.1 billion each and told Congress that price "strikes us as unsustainable." He projected that by 2025, NASA will have spent $93 billion on the Artemis lunar program. The price tag is far more than the space agency’s lunar program was projected to cost a decade ago, CNBC reported. In 2012, NASA...

CAPE CANAVERAL, FL – After yet another delay, NASA is halting immediate plans to pursue an Artemis I launch and will scrap the program altogether and fake another moon landing instead. Future launch periods began to look uncertain, so the team decided that faking another moon landing is superior to continuing to plan and then postpone launches. "This is just cheaper," said Jim Free, associate administrator for NASA's vaunted Exploration Systems division. "No one will be able to tell the difference anyway. The tech has gotten much better since the last time we faked a moon landing. It's not even...

All eyes will be on the historic Launch Complex 39B when the Orion spacecraft and the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket lift off for the first time from NASA's modernized Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Artemis I will be the first in a series of increasingly complex missions to build a long-term human presence at the Moon for decades to come. The primary goals for Artemis I are to demonstrate Orion’s systems in a spaceflight environment and ensure a safe re-entry, descent, splashdown, and recovery prior to the first flight with crew on Artemis II.

7:38 a.m. Countdown clock in 30-minute hold The countdown clock went into a 30-minute hold at T-40 minutes while the liquid hydrogen team continues to troubleshoot a problem with the RS-25 engines at the base of the core stage. The 30-minute hold is supposed to end with the countdown with only 10 minutes ahead of launch, but a T-0, and has already pushed beyond the start of the two-hour window at 8:33 a.m. An earlier noted potential issue of what seemed to be a crack seen in the inner tank has in NASA engineers’ opinion been not in the actual...

Live event coverage will air on Space.com courtesy of NASA Television, the NASA mobile app(opens in new tab), and the agency's official website(opens in new tab), with prelaunch activities on Monday, Aug. 22. For anxious toe-tappers, the launch countdown(opens in new tab)starts Saturday, Aug. 27, at 10:23 a.m. ET. Sure, it might not provide the same epic experience that the Earth-shuddering blastoff will offer, but it's the next best thing and you don’t have to worry about the heat, parking hassles, or huge crowds. The stages of the Artemis 1 mission to the moon. (Image credit: NASA) The Artemis 1...

Lockheed Martin and its collaborators believe having a voice-activated virtual assistant and video calls in the spacecraft would be more convenient for astronauts, affording them access to information away from the crew console. That flexibility might even keep them safer, engineers say. An experiment to test the technology will ride along with Artemis on its first spaceflight, which could launch as early as Aug. 29. The project, named Callisto after one of Artemis' favorite hunting companions in Greek mythology, is programmed to give crew live answers about the spacecraft's flight status and other data, such as water supply and battery...

Known as the Space Launch System (SLS), the vehicle was moved to Pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida ahead of the expected lift-off on 29 August. The debut outing is a test with no crew aboard, but future missions will send astronauts back to the lunar surface for the first time in over 50 years. The near 100m-tall (328ft) SLS rode an immense tractor to the pad. It started moving from its assembly building at Kennedy just before 22:00 on Tuesday, local time, and had completed the 6.7km (4.2 miles) journey by just after sunrise on Wednesday...

According to a statement by the Düzce Municipality, many blocks that are estimated to belong to the building of the theater stage have been discovered in the archaeological digs in the ancient city. Of the blocks decorated with floral and mythological elements, the most striking one depicts the hunter Actaeon, who was killed with his own dogs by angering the Goddess Artemis in mythology. Actaeon, who was torn by three dogs, is installed at the top of the block decorated with floral ornaments.It was reported that archaeologists have started cleaning the blocks featuring beautiful decorations unearthed from the orchestra section...

Artemis 1 team must meet a variety of checkouts and other milestones to make it happen. Indeed, Aug. 29 is just one of three "placeholder" dates in an upcoming Artemis 1 launch window, along with Sept. 2 and Sept. 5... Artemis 1 will be the first mission in NASA's Artemis program of lunar exploration, which aims to establish a permanent human presence on and around the moon by the late 2020s. It will be the first flight for the powerful but long-delayed SLS and the second for Orion, which aced a quick test flight to Earth orbit back in 2014....

The third attempt at a final prelaunch test for NASA's Artemis I mega moon rocket began Thursday morning, but the trial hit some snags and ended prematurely at 5:10 p.m. ET. The agency will host a news conference on Friday to share updates and next steps for the test. The mission team had been attempting to fuel the 322-foot-tall (98-meter-tall) Artemis I rocket stack, including NASA's Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft, at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, but encountered a number of delays.

NASA's second attempt to fuel its Artemis 1 moon mission megarocket hit another snag on Monday (April 4) due to a valve issue on ground equipment. A stuck vent valve high up on the mobile launcher structure supporting the Artemis 1's Space Launch System rocket at Launch Pad 39B of NASA's Kennedy Space Center forced NASA to scrub the Artemis 1 test after fueling began on Monday, agency officials said. The valve is use to relieve pressure from the rocket's core stage during fueling. Monday's fueling attempt was NASA's second try to fill the core stage of Artemis 1's 322-foot-tall...

Four lightning strikes hit the area around Launch Pad 39B, where NASA's first Space Launch System (SLS) megarocket is undergoing a three-day fueling test known as a "wet dress rehearsal" for its Artemis 1 mission to the moon later this year. The rocket is protected from lightning by three towers and a catenary wire structure to divert strikes to the ground away from the booster. The first three lightning strikes were relatively low power events, NASA officials wrote in an update late Saturday. But the fourth strike, which hit "tower one" of the lightning protection system, was more powerful. The...