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Nasa orders new rockets for its new crewed Moon programme

5th May 2020

By: Rebecca Campbell

Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

     

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America’s space agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa), has placed a $1.79-billion contract with US rocket manufacturer Aerojet Rocketdyne for an additional batch of RS-25 rocket engines. The new order is for 18 more of the engines, and adjusts a previous contract (awarded in November 2015) for six new RS-25s, to take the total of new engines to be acquired to 24.

The RS-25 is used to power the core stage of Nasa’s Space Launch System (SLS) – the agency’s most powerful ever rocket. Four RS-25s are fitted to each SLS core stage. The RS-25 was originally developed to power Nasa’s Space Shuttle, and the agency has 16 of the rockets left over from that programme. These existing rockets have been fitted with new controllers, upgraded to provide the higher performance needed by the SLS, and successfully tested. 

“This contract allows Nasa to work with Aerojet Rocketdyne to build the rocket engines needed for future missions,” pointed out Marshall Space Flight Centre-based SLS programme manager John Honeycutt. “The same reliable engines that launched more than 100 Space Shuttle missions has been modified to be even more powerful to launch the next astronauts who will set foot on the lunar surface during the Artemis missions.”

The new rockets will be built to the improved standard and will also benefit from new manufacturing techniques. The company is using advanced manufacturing techniques to modify some of the rocket’s components, which will reduce the cost of each engine by up to 30%. Some of these modified components have already been tested during engine tests replicating flight conditions.

“We’ve already begun production on the first six new RS-25 engines,” reported SLS engines manager Johnny Heflin. “Aerojet Rocketdyne has restarted the production lines, established a supplier base and is building engines using advanced techniques that reduce both the cost and time for manufacturing each engine.”

The engines for the uncrewed Artemis I flight test mission have been assembled and fitted to the SLS core stage. This core stage, with its engines, is now in the B-2 test stand at Nasa’s Stennis Space Centre, for what is called Green Run testing. This is an integrated test of the entire core stage, which climaxes with the firing of the four RS-25s. 

Following the successful completion of these tests, the core stage will be transported by special barge to Nasa’s Kennedy Space Centre at Cape Canaveral in Florida. There, it will be integrated with the other stages of the SLS and with the Orion spacecraft. It is currently scheduled to launch late next year.

The uncrewed Artemis I mission will see the Orion spacecraft (with its service module, provided by the European Space Agency) fly to the Moon, passing just 100 km above the lunar surface, before proceeding 70 000 km beyond the Moon, entering lunar orbit at that distance. It will remain in that orbit for at least six days. The total mission should last about three weeks and the spacecraft should travel some 2.1-million kilometres.  

The Artemis programme is Nasa’s new crewed lunar exploration programme, the long-awaited successor to the renowned Apollo programme of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The first crewed flight will be Artemis II, which will also orbit the Moon. The first new landing of astronauts on the Moon will be the objective of the Artemis III mission, which will hopefully happen in 2024. 

 

Edited by Creamer Media Reporter

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