NASA wants to accelerate its Artemis missions to the moon. It will need to drop some big hardware to do it.

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NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman recently announced a major reorganization of the Artemis program and how the agency plans to return astronauts to the moon.

this new plan Shorten the time between missions and redraw the map, where launches will achieve various program milestones. nothing will change Artemis 2could lift off within weeks to carry four astronauts on a 10-day flight around the Earth moon and return to Earth. However, every mission after Artemis 2 has been tweaked.

The programmatic shuffle is rendering parts of the old Artemis program obsolete, leaving major ground hardware half-built and an uncertain future. gateway A lunar-orbiting space station under development.

Isaacman announced the changes at a press conference on February 27, citing unacceptable wait times between Artemis missions. space launch system (SLS) rockets and the risk of relying on unproven technology to perform mission-critical objectives, such as landing astronauts safely on the lunar surface.

Artemis 2 SLS is currently undergoing maintenance at NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) kennedy space center In Florida, rollback possible to its launch pad time The launch window opens on April 1. Artemis 2 will be the program’s first manned flight Orion spacecraft and the first return of astronauts to lunar space in more than half a century. Under the previous framework, it should be followed artemis 3 In 2028, the plan will carry SpaceX astronauts to the first moon landing starship vehicle.

For Artemis 4, NASA An upgrade is planned to SLS Block 1B, which is designed to be powerful enough to launch elements of the Gateway Space Station for use in lunar orbit. Starting with Artemis 4, NASA’s goal is to use the Gateway outpost around the moon for deep space science and as an orbital waystation where Orion and the program’s lunar landers can dock to transport astronauts to the lunar surface. However, Gateway is nowhere to be found in NASA’s recent Artemis update.

According to NASA’s new plan, there will be no SLS Block 1B. To shorten the launch cycle from the current 3.5-year interval to the required 10 months, SLS is being standardized to a single configuration. NASA no longer relies on SLS’s current interim cryogenic propulsion upper stage reportedly being considered Converting United Launch Alliance’s Centaur V upper stage for use on the SLS for all Artemis launches after Artemis 3.

revised artemis project Currently, the launch target of Artemis 3 is 2027, but this mission is not to land on the moon, but to fly to low earth orbit For rendezvous and docking operations with one or both of the Artemis program’s contracted lunar landers – SpaceX’s Starship and blue originof Blue Moon spacecraft—depending on their relative readiness for orbital missions.

NASA and space exploration technology corp. Starship served as the lander for Artemis 3 and 4 and was contracted to blue moon But the agency is now signaling that it is ready to launch Artemis 3 using any lander that is safe to use as launch time approaches.

With Artemis 3 becoming a stepping stone to a moon landing around the Earth, Artemis 4 has been identified as the program’s first manned lunar landing, a mission NASA still hopes to complete in 2028, with Artemis 5 potentially used for a second lunar landing the same year.

Isaacman said this is a significant reshaping of the original Artemis mission course, but the plan is designed to maximize crew safety and NASA’s chances of success. This reorganization was not without some sacrifices, however.

Under NASA’s new plan, the fate of the Gateway remains uncertain. Many components of Gateway are already built-in Various assembly statesbut there are currently no rockets to launch once some of them are ready, and no missions assigned to rendezvous with the proposed outposts. Congress proposed Revised NASA Authorization Act On Wednesday (March 4), the bill endorsed many of Isaacman’s proposed changes to the Artemis program, but only required him to brief lawmakers on the status of the gateway within a few months of the bill’s passage.

If Gateway is axed, as seems likely, its existing hardware could potentially be repurposed for a possible base on the lunar surface, which has been a long-standing part of the Artemis program goals and NASA’s vision for a sustained human presence on the moon. One of the revisions to the authorization bill even gives NASA administrators the freedom to “repurpose, reprogram, reconfigure, or reassign existing programs, platforms, modules, or hardware originally developed for other programs” to ensure the success of the space agency’s Artemis goals.

Canceling future SLS upgrades will also have an impact on some of Artemis’ ground infrastructure, which was built to support larger rocket models. To move the 322-foot-tall (98-meter) SLS Block 1 from the VAB to the launch pad, NASA used a giant Crawler-Transporter 2 vehicle to traverse the distance, with the rocket standing on its Mobile Launch Platform (MLP). The MLP contains the SLS launch tower, which helps hold the rocket in place, and provides an umbilical cable that helps fuel the SLS before liftoff.

Previous block upgrades to SLS were sufficient Requires separate MLP (Mobile Launcher 2) Build, rather than upgrade, existing platforms. but In update On March 3, NASA confirmed that “the agency no longer plans to use the Discovery Upper Stage or Mobile Launcher 2.”

The contract for Mobile Launcher 2 was awarded in 2019 and has Cost approximately US$1.6 billion About 98% of these have been paid out to date. Seven years later, Mobile Launcher 2 is now nearly complete outside of VAB, but may now never fulfill its original intended purpose. Relying on a single MLP to support Artemis launches less than a year apart could lead to schedule congestion. The SLS MLP will require refurbishment due to damage caused after the launch of Artemis 1 in November 2022.

Preparing the existing mobile launcher and the new Centaur V-based upper stage for Artemis 4 flight could take a year or more because the work will go beyond normal post-launch refurbishment efforts. Engineers must reconfigure the upstream umbilical, fluid and electrical interfaces, and control systems and then complete testing to verify the update to initiate SLS.

However, the potential loss of Gateway, or having to stop building and/or repurposing Mobile Launcher 2 hardware, does not necessarily represent a complete loss to NASA or the Artemis program. The institution has a A long history of repurposing or evolving large hardware For new or revised assignments. As NASA’s program continues to evolve, elements of both could be used to support Artemis or other future missions.