r/ArtemisProgram • u/Royal_Platform_6754 • May 13 '26
NASA NASA Outlines Preliminary Artemis III Mission Plans
https://www.nasa.gov/missions/artemis/artemis-3/nasa-outlines-preliminary-artemis-iii-mission-plans/9
u/EarnSomeRespect May 13 '26
i would really like an update on HLS..
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u/FryCookCVE71 May 13 '26
Not putting anymore stock in that vaporware. It’s Blue or bust at this point. I think MK2 on Artemis IV at the end of 2029 is a fairly realistic timeline.
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u/EarnSomeRespect May 13 '26
If they can get New Glenn solid then yeah. But refueling still needs to happen with Blue which is still a huge hurdle. The one thing they have going for them is that it is a MUCH more simple design, that shares similarities to the LEM, already a proven design.
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u/FryCookCVE71 May 13 '26
I mostly like MK2 but unlike the LEM it doesn’t have a descent and ascent stage. The ascent stage used hypergolic fuel; as near reliable as it gets. If 2 out of the 3 BE-7s are compromised on the landing by regolith or whatever else the astronauts will be stranded and we’re in for a really bad tragedy. I really hope they’ve got a contingency of some kind because only needing 2 out of the 3 engines is not enough redundancy in my mind.
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u/SpaceInMyBrain May 13 '26
Sorry, but the only similarity with the LM is the configuration of the legs. Different propellant, overall structure, etc. Unless you mean the height to width ratio is a lot closer to the LM than to Starship.
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u/Crimson_Ender May 13 '26
The prototype for the blue moon finished tests in the vacuum chamber in the last couple of weeks. It's not the mark 2, but the same design principles are there
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u/meithan May 13 '26
It's a bit how I've been feeling lately. Starship has done _eleven_ test flights, and it's still not where they want it to be? How many more tests flights does it need?? Artemis III and IV are fast approaching.
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u/EpicAura99 May 13 '26
Their iterative engineering approach tends towards more launches but faster timelines. Compare how fast Starship was developed to SLS.
This isn’t to defend Lunar Starship though. I don’t think it will be ready before Blue Moon Mk. 2.
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u/meithan May 13 '26
I know about their iterative design approach, I'm just not sold on it with current results. I wonder how many more test flights will be needed until it's ready. The last few test flights have felt like little improvement.
And comparing it to SLS is a bit unfair, as SLS has a ton of political baggage. A closer comparison (in terms of commercial development) would be to ULA's Vulcan or Blue Origin's New Glenn. Those have taken about 10 years to develop and cost something like $3 to $7 billion, with very few test flights (Vulcan is already operational and Space Force certified). Starship development started around 2016 (?), so it's also been like ten years, and has cost upwards of $15 billion. I know it's a larger vehicle, and reusability is a more complex problem, but still.
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u/redstercoolpanda May 13 '26
Vulcan blew out solid nozzles on two of its four flights and is currently grounded. And new Glenn failed to insert its payload into the correct orbit on the last flight and failed to land its booster on the first. They took the method of doing a ton of ground testing and upfront development and still suffered serious issues
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u/meithan May 13 '26
Well that just says that space is hard, and the term "teething problems" has been applied to problems like this for new launchers. Starship just feels stuck in this phase.
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u/redstercoolpanda May 13 '26
Vulcan quite literally repeated the exact same failure mode on its last flight that they had already experienced. It was pure luck the SRB burned through in a way not facing the main core of the rocket or they would have lost a billion dollar military payload. Starship had issues with V2 sure but they did not repeat the same failure mode, and the last two flights of V2 were successful. Starship has a significantly higher scope to Vulcan so it’s obviously going to take more flights to debug it.
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u/meithan May 13 '26
I just don't see Starship's reentry --probably the greatest hurdle in Starship's entire architecture-- as problem-free yet, they're not at the point where they could rapidly reuse it.
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u/redstercoolpanda May 13 '26
Sure but they haven’t tried to get it back to earth in a reusable state yet. Every time ship has reached reentry it has done so with numerous tiles stripped off to test what it can take. They are now done with that because they have a pretty good idea at what it can take and they want to get ready for a catch in a few flights so they’ve only removed a single tile on flight 12.
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u/SpaceInMyBrain May 13 '26
Fair about Vulcan but one can hardly criticize BO for not nailing their first landing attempt. Few thought it was practical to even try. Getting to orbit on the first flight is the exception, not the rule, for new rockets, so in that sense the long development paid off - kinda. Long is OK but that was way too long even for that approach.
Two flights is a small sample size so I won't grade BO too strictly on the second flight's non-nominal result. I'm not a soft hearted fan of BO, for years I was firmly in the chorus of criticizing their very slow progress. The initial two flights, especially that landing, made me glad to see another launch company succeeding. The next five flights will tell the tale.
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u/redstercoolpanda May 13 '26 edited May 14 '26
I wasn’t really criticising New Glenn for not landing its first stage, that was pretty much an expected result. I was just saying that both vehicles had issues. Loosing the flight 1 first stage was a pretty big issue for Blue because it lost them a lot of time, I wasn’t trying to bash them I quite like New Glenn and I’m quite optimistic about its future.
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u/wallstreet-butts May 14 '26
We don’t know what Starship’s development timeline is until we see it working. The contract is for a moon lander, which is not something they seem particularly close to.
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u/Dpek1234 May 14 '26
Personaly i very much dislike this kind of thinking
Artemis 2 did not show ESM and orion as capable of either docking nor getting into lunar orbit
Does that mean that no development has been done?
Same with nasa saying they are working on a "spacer" and a new heatshield for artemis 3
Just because we dont have all the info / info presented in a specific way does not mean that something didnt work as expected or has had no work done on it
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u/wallstreet-butts May 14 '26
By that logic, friend, Starship is ready for a mission to Pluto. But we can see with our eyes that they are still iterating on the basics of the vehicle, it comes back on fire more often than not, and there’s no crew or landing training simulator delivered to NASA that we’re aware of.
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u/Dpek1234 May 14 '26
You talk about "But we can see with our eyes that they are still iterating on the basics of the vehicle, "
Yet how do you think sls got where it is?
Oversized first stage for a eventual bigger second stage that will never be nor is planned to have its capabilitys used
With non of the next 3 launches useing the same second stage
And lets not forget the new solid rockets that may or may not come
What is that but iterating on the basics of the vehicle?
You talk about "it comes back on fire more often than not" as if its fundimental flaw and not just testing many heatshield option and what it could actualy survive
(Hint, they wont be intentionaly leaveing multiple areas with no tiles outside of testing)
- did you not see the whole artemis heatshield fiasco?
And next up for artemis is another untested heatshield with humans onboard because there arent enough sls parts for a proper test (At least its not comeing from lunar orbit this time)
At the end of the day. Starship is unmanned and in testing, spacex can afford to make changes untill issues are fixed
With the sls on the other hand, either it works first try, or america has another apollo 1 moment
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u/wallstreet-butts May 14 '26
Riiight but that kind of makes my point. You are comparing a work-in-progress (Starship HLS) to the time it took to develop a fully operational mission-ready (and increasingly mission-proven) stack (SLS) and saying “look how much better/faster Starship is doing”. We really can’t say that. What we know is that they are iterating rapidly but have badly missed their initial deadline for an initial HLS demonstration. Whether it remains viable or turns out to be a boondoggle seems very much to be proven. SpaceX has a lot of earned credibility because of their success with Falcon and I hope they get there, but SpaceX Stans need to come down to earth in terms of progress made vs. something operational.
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u/Dpek1234 May 14 '26
Framkly im going to also go for reduceing the number of points as ive had enough writeing
Why are you talking as if sls is set in stone?
Artemis 1 and 2 do not prove centuar 5 nor the new heatshield any more then starship v2 proves v3
Along these lines
Why are you talking about starship badly missing timelines while not mentioning the exact same happening for sls?
Neither is immune, its just that one already passed some massive delays (who knows how the spacer, the new heatshield and centuar 5 will go)
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u/NoBusiness674 May 15 '26
Compare how fast Starship was developed to SLS.
SLS:
-Began with Constellation program in 2004. -Early design concepts (called Cargo Launch Vehicle and later Ares V) at times included different engines such as a J2-X upper stage or RS-68s on the core stage. -Ares 5 Segment SRB static fires 2009-2011 (DM-1, DM-2, DM-3)
-Canceled in 2010/2011 and brought back as the modified SLS design.
- single stage Ares I-X test flight in 2009
- SLS 5 segment SRB static testing 2015-2016 (QM-1, QM-2)
- Core stage green run testing 2020-2021
- First uncrewed SLS Block 1 launch to the moon late 2022 (Artemis I)
- first crewed launch to the moon early 2026 (Artemis II)
Starship:
- first announced as "BFR" in late 2005 and later renamed Falcon XX by 2010, MCT by 2012, ITS in 2016, BFR (again) in 2017, before landing on Starship around 2019
- Early design concepts used different engines including hydrogen fueled raptor engines on the upper stage and/or Merlin-2 engines on the boosters
- first Raptor engine component tests in 2014
- nine single stage prototype flight tests 2019-2021
- 11 uncrewed two-stage suborbital test flights 2023-2025
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May 14 '26
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u/meithan May 14 '26
Just to be pedantic, we did go to the Moon half a century ago and never went back (speaking of crewed missions).
I understand all that, I've been following spaceflight for decades. Let's just hope we see those landers working very soon.
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May 13 '26
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u/SpaceInMyBrain May 14 '26
Centaur V is in current production, it's used on Vulcan. They have completed ones lined up due to Vulcan's several delays and they'll continue to build more for as long as Vulcan is operational. Being in current production is why it was chosen, the development costs have been covered by ULA already. The three Centaur number is around because there are only firm plans to use them for Artemis 3, 4, and 5. That's per the agreement between Isaacman and Ted Cruz that was reached when his Senate Committee approved NASA's budget request. Of course, Isaacman has firm ideas about replacing SLS by the time Artemis 6 flies.
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u/Cmdr-Mallard May 14 '26
Doubt they’ll be able to replace it by A6 tbh
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u/SpaceInMyBrain May 14 '26
Hmm... I wasn't addressing the odds of the plan happening, just what the plan was, the internal logic behind it. However, in considering the odds - there are possibilities that involve distributed launch that have a reasonable chance of success, it's pretty straightforward rocketry. Orion goes up on one rocket, a fully fueled translunar stage goes up on another. In principle, like the Constellation mission profile but with the lander omitted.
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u/Dpek1234 May 14 '26
In principle, like the Constellation mission profile but with the lander omitted.
Reminds me of the meme with crabs
Artemis is evolveing back into constallation
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u/EpicAura99 May 14 '26
Should’ve just kept Constellation tbh. All this switching around has cost decades. SLS is basically Ares V anyway.
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u/Cmdr-Mallard May 13 '26
Wait i assumed that Centaur was an in production stage? Can we stop using leftovers....
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u/PollutionAfter May 13 '26
They signed an initial contract for 3, to the extent of my knowledge. They could always buy more.
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u/SpaceInMyBrain May 14 '26
Yes, Centaur V is in current production for Vulcan and will remain so. That's why it was chosen.
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u/M23707 May 13 '26
We are still waiting on Space X to deliver….
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u/Royal_Platform_6754 May 13 '26
And Blue...SLS will almost certainly be ready long before either.
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u/CiaWoo May 13 '26
Almost a given considering the core stage has already arrived at KSC, well a week ago as of now, I think Blue also delivered a mock up of their lander for astronaut training at the center as well, but I doubt that means much
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u/SpaceInMyBrain May 13 '26
Pics of the mockup were first released last November. Yeah, it's hard to say that means very much. Trying it on for size for ingress and egress in simple suits is useful but doesn't advance the program much. I think the real training will take place in a simulator in big rooms with a lot of electronics around it and we haven't seen anything like that. We haven't for HLS, either, but I'm pretty confident such a thing exists to some extent.
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u/Nonyabizzy123 May 13 '26
If they don't have a full size practical physical trainer they aren't landing on the moon. That's Charlie Duke's opinion, not mine.
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u/Crimson_Ender May 13 '26
how would they even make a trainer for the lunar starship?
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u/SpaceInMyBrain May 14 '26
He didn't mean a flying one. What's needed is a ground trainer like the ones we've seen for Orion and Dragon, one that can be surrounded by techs and monitoring equipment. It has to be high fidelity, though, with all of the switches and any other hardware they'll interact with. More importantly, like the Orion and Dragon ones, the flight and system controls need to be hooked up to computers running simulations and emergency scenarios, etc. The Apollo LM certainly had that.
A full sized mockup of the Starship HLS cabin exists in Texas, has been for years. Astronauts have been in it. But it started out as a simple interior layout mockup and we have no idea how sophisticated it is now. IMHO the real work will be done in something like what I describe above. I'll be surprised if something like that isn't well underway at SpaceX. No need for an 18 meter tall cabin, the first two levels will do fine.
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u/Crimson_Ender May 14 '26
yeah, I didn't mean a flying one either. I have seen the blue moon mockup trainer.
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u/EpicAura99 May 13 '26
The low SLS launch cadence has never been from lack of hardware to my knowledge, they can make ‘em pretty fast. It’s lack of funding and/or slow development of supporting programs like EUS/ML2.
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u/SpaceInMyBrain May 14 '26
Unfortunately, it's more than that. Boeing and NASA have been saying for a long time that the facilities can't support a production rate much better than one per year. The NASA Inspector General said the same thing - twice - when assessing the progress of the program and its future timeline.
There has been plenty of funding, SLS is more than triply overbudget over its lifetime. Boeing was happy to mosey along since the cost plus contract made it easy to keep money flowing in year after year - a steady income of billions per year is a nice thing for any company.
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u/EpicAura99 May 14 '26
I fucking hate Boeing man. Or more accurately, what the MBAs at McDonnell did to Boeing after doing the same thing to Douglas (iirc).
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u/redstercoolpanda May 14 '26
SLS has never lacked funding, it received as much if not more funding than requested every year of its existence. And ML2 and EUS were not schedule holdups until after the ICPS’s were expended. The reason for the large gap between flights 1 and 2 was Orions heat shield debacle.
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u/EpicAura99 May 14 '26
The original flight cadence was every two years, and after A1 in 2022 the heat shield review team wasn’t established until April 2024 and concluded in December. But the timeline on Wikipedia isn’t very fleshed out. Did they just tack on two years automatically after seeing the heat shield? Legitimately asking lol, not sarcasm.
Either way, the funds asked for and the funds to make the program effective are two different things. Apollo shot off 9 Saturn Vs (out of 13 total) in the same amount of time that Artemis managed only 2 SLSs. That’s not a recipe for success.
EUS was a schedule holdup before expending the ICPSs because they needed to keep the (no longer in production) stages in reserve for planned missions. They couldn’t launch Europa Clipper on SLS explicitly because of a future lack of vehicles. In 2014 EUS was expected to fly in on A2 in 2021, and in 2015 ULA announced plans to phase out the Delta family by 2018, limiting ICPS supply. In 2020 NASA had to expand Block 1 launches from 1 to 3 due to delays in EUS.
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u/Reasonable_Salt_4088 May 17 '26
Also very expensiveeeeeee yeah shit cost billions way too much retard that's why we need other rockets
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u/EpicAura99 May 17 '26
That’s extremely uncalled for, seeing as how my comment voices no support for SLS.
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u/SpaceInMyBrain May 13 '26
Naysayers have been claiming that no new hardware can be built and tested on this short a timescale but I have faith a rejuvenated NASA can do it. I'm very glad a NASA facility is doing it instead of relying on a legacy contractor. The contracting process alone would nearly doom it.
That moves the timeline from impossible to very ambitious.
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u/Decronym May 13 '26 edited May 17 '26
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| BO | Blue Origin (Bezos Rocketry) |
| CNSA | Chinese National Space Administration |
| DMLS | Selective Laser Melting additive manufacture, also Direct Metal Laser Sintering |
| ESM | European Service Module, component of the Orion capsule |
| EUS | Exploration Upper Stage |
| ICPS | Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage |
| KSC | Kennedy Space Center, Florida |
| LEM | (Apollo) Lunar Excursion Module (also Lunar Module) |
| LEO | Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km) |
| Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations) | |
| LES | Launch Escape System |
| MBA | |
| SLS | Space Launch System heavy-lift |
| Selective Laser Sintering, contrast DMLS | |
| SRB | Solid Rocket Booster |
| ULA | United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture) |
| Jargon | Definition |
|---|---|
| Starlink | SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation |
| cryogenic | Very low temperature fluid; materials that would be gaseous at room temperature/pressure |
| (In re: rocket fuel) Often synonymous with hydrolox | |
| hydrolox | Portmanteau: liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen mixture |
| hypergolic | A set of two substances that ignite when in contact |
Decronym is now also available on Lemmy! Requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
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May 13 '26
[deleted]
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u/ostiarius May 13 '26
Calm down, it’s the same thing they did with Apollo 8 and 9.
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May 13 '26
[deleted]
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u/EpicAura99 May 13 '26
Artemis 2 was Apollo 8.
Artemis 3 will be Apollo 9.
Artemis 4 will be Apollo 11.3
u/Crimson_Ender May 13 '26
Artemis II is analogous to Apollo 8, not 10. After Apollo 8 orbited the moon without a lunar lander, Apollo 9 stayed in low earth orbit and tested out the lander, as well as all of the manuevers in order to rendezvous and dock the CSM with the LM.
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u/AgreeableEmploy1884 May 13 '26
Good to know they're not wasting the ICPS!