The 'hidden' power of NASA's biggest super rocket: Technical wonder!

The story of the most powerful SLS rocket in NASA history - if understood deeply - can make more people love it!

The press called NASA's delay of the SLS launch "a great setback". Few people know, the two incidents that delayed the launch of the most powerful rocket in NASA history are just a small difficulty in the series of challenges that SLS encountered during its decades of construction.

"The Mother of All Space Launch Vehicles" - is how David Beaman, Director of NASA's Office of SLS Engineering & Integration, used to call the future super-enhanced SLS rockets (called SLS rockets). Block 2) - to see how NASA and its thousands of minds have high hopes for the SLS launch system.

NASA's slight difficulty and delay shows the agency's impeccable care for its newest rocket system.

To better understand, National Geographic had a long article to talk about the besieging challenges of SLS from the early days, until today - it still stands at launch pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center, state. Florida, USA - to be ready to fly, to prepare to usher in a new era of space exploration called the Artemis Era.

If one day SLS flies straight through space, for those who stick with it, emotions will be mixed with joy. Why?

NASA's SLS Launch Delays: Slow To Be Sure

On August 29, 2022, NASA postponed the first launch of the SLS (Mega Moon) rocket. The main reason is because of the failure of the RS-25 engine number 3 in the core stage of the SLS rocket. In addition, the leakage of liquid hydrogen from 'slow loading' to 'fast loading' also makes NASA more cautious.

On September 3, 2022, after fixing an engine failure and fuel leak for the previous SLS, NASA conducted a second SLS launch attempt. However, the agency continues to face a hydrogen leak fault. The launch team made three attempts to fix the leak, but after each attempt to fix the problem, they discovered a new vulnerability. Shortly after, launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson decided to abort the second SLS launch attempt, The Verge reported.

Engadget quoted Jim Free - NASA's deputy director of exploration systems development - as saying: The fuel leak will cause the SLS rocket to likely not launch in the early days of September 2022 but may have to be moved. September 16 or early October 2022.

"In order for the SLS to take off to bring the Orion spacecraft to the Moon, we need to make sure everything is perfect. One small mistake can destroy everything in a split second. We don't allow that to happen. " - Director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson confirmed.

Image of NASA's SLS rocket simulation.

If all goes well according to plan (meaning the Artemis I mission is successful), then by May 2024, a crew of four astronauts could be in lunar orbit on the Artemis II mission — marks the first time humans have made the approximately 386,242 km journey to the Moon since 1972.

And right in 2025, NASA plans to carry out the Artemis III mission to put people on the Moon after 53 years of absence.

But before any astronauts can set foot on Earth's natural satellite, the SLS rocket complex and the Orion spacecraft need to pass their steps.

SLS - Mankind's Great Ambition

As the SLS takes off, a loud bang will churn Florida's Merritt Island as four core-stage rocket engines and two solid-fuel boosters - the largest ever built - generate up to nearly 4 percent thrust. million kilograms. In 500 seconds into space, SLS will reach a speed of 28,002 km / h (equivalent to 7,778 meters / s).

Thanks to the solid propellant rocket system on either side, the SLS could bounce off the launch pad like a shuttle, galloping straight into the sky on a fiery plume of flue gas.

Orion is the first crewed spacecraft designed by NASA since the US Space Shuttle first flew in 1981. The SLS is also the most powerful rocket NASA has ever built.

To get out of the ground, the SLS had to deal with more than just gravity. NASA's Mega Moon rocket has faced huge challenges: Years of delays, a budget in the tens of billions of dollars, relentless criticism, and the possibility that private American companies will soon launch a massive rocket. same with more cost.

However, as of now, the SLS is the only rocket capable of sending a man to the Moon. For John Blevins, Chief Rocket Engineer at NASA, "Since 2019, the SLS super rocket has represented a fundamental aspect of our unique human ambitions."

The core stage of the SLS rocket was built at NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility (pronounced MEE-shoo), 24 kilometers east of downtown New Orleans, Louisiana. This 174,015-square-foot factory houses most of NASA's production of SLS rockets.

In September 1961, NASA took over the facility, expecting a production site with a deep-water port to build the Apollo Program's Saturn V rockets. The Saturn V core stage is also done here, as is the shuttle's iconic orange fuel tank.

Fire and smoke billowed across the Northrop Grumman test facility in Promontory, Wyoming, during the test of one of the SLS's solid rocket boosters.

Construction of the SLS core stage, overseen by Boeing. Also at the Michoud Assembly Facility, Lockheed Martin will be responsible for building the structural framework for the Orion spacecraft, after which the Orion will be completed at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The two solid rocket boosters flanking the SLS were built by Northrop Grumman in areas of Wyoming and then shipped by train for assembly at the Kennedy Space Center. The remaining four space shuttle-era RS-25 engines powering the core stage were tested by Aerojet Rocketdyne in Mississippi.

To build the most powerful super rocket in NASA history, manufacturers must be careful about every little detail. Only the welds of the SLS core stage are considered. Unlike conventional welds, those on the SLS are created by friction - with the 24 meter wide welder, the largest ever built. This process produces stronger welds with less impurities and no filler metal required.

This is to ensure that the core stage can withstand the tremendous pressure when the SLS's supercooled hydrogen/oxygen fuel tanks are compressed until the SLS explodes more than 2.5 times the load it would experience in flight.

Legacy from the Space Shuttle

In some respects, SLS is literally an engineering wonder 'borrowed' from the space shuttle. The first four launches of the SLS will use RS-25 engines that have flown during the space shuttle missions - but have been refurbished and fitted with new flight controls.

SLS solid-fuel rocket segments also flew during space shuttle missions. This means that when the SLS takes off, components from 83 different (improved) shuttle flights will fly with it.

An early model of the SLS sits inside a 36-centimeter-wide wind tunnel at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. First built in the late 1950s by the US Army, this wind tunnel was used to test models of the Apollo Program Saturn V rockets and space shuttles.

But creating a new launch vehicle from shuttle-style hardware is not an easy process. Back in the 20th century, the space shuttle's fuel tanks were next to its main engines, but on the SLS those engines were directly below the fuel tanks.

To study how SLS would behave in flight, engineers used a virtual rocket at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in the southeastern state of Alabama.

Covered in metal cases and the accompanying white cables, the Systems Integration Lab houses a flight-qualified replica of the SLS computer and avionics. Elsewhere in the lab, a system called Advanced Real-Time Environment for modeling, integration, and simulation (ARTEMIS for short) simulates SLS launches with precision extremely high, to the propellant in the rocket's fuel tank.

ARTEMIS simulates the forces acting on an SLS rocket during launch, from aerodynamic drag to fuel tank temperature and pressure, up to 10,000 times per second. In response, the SLS flight computer (SLS flight computer) makes adjustments to the virtual rocket every 20 milliseconds. The SLS flight computer runs 50,000 lines of stretched code.

At NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center Systems Integration Laboratory in Huntsville, Alabama, a complex computer system is used to simulate hundreds of thousands of virtual SLS launches.

Together, the system performed hundreds of thousands of virtual SLS flights, fixing all kinds of problems brought up by engineers into digital rockets.

For Shaun Phillips, SLS Flight Software Lead, the 'real' moment comes in March 2021 at NASA's Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. During testing of the SLS core stage, the SLS's four RS-25 engines ignited and produced 725,747 kg of thrust for a full 8 minutes — the amount of time they would need to fire the SLS during the actual Artemis I mission.

Phillips said: 'When the engine ignites, it's that feeling of your heart wanting to fall out of your chest. The next time those engines run for real for eight minutes, that will be the moment the SLS takes Orion straight to the Moon."

The thorny road of SLS

In common sense, in the journey of human space exploration, the path to creating SLS (or any launch vehicle) is hardly always smooth.

The origins of the SLS rocket are believed to date back to February 1, 2003, beginning after the disaster when the space shuttle Columbia exploded during re-entry, killing seven of its crew members.

In January of the following year, a review board called for the space shuttles to be retired, and then-President George W. Bush outlined a new plan to send astronauts to the International Space Station ( ISS), the Moon and Mars.

This initiative, formalized as the Constellation Program in 2005, called for the design of a crew capsule called Orion, a Moon lander, and a new family of rockets. But the Constellation Program quickly became expensive and behind schedule, and in February 2010 the then-Obama administration suggested it be scrapped.

The move has alarmed Congress, especially because Constellation has maintained contracts with NASA to support thousands of high-paying, skilled jobs around the country.

In response, Congress funded two different rocket programs: the Commercial Crew Program, which currently contracts with SpaceX and Boeing to send astronauts to the ISS; and the SLS manufacturing program.

SLS and Orion complex at Kennedy Space Center.

Although, SLS is finally ready to launch to the Moon in the near future, but it has had to pay a small price. For the team that built the SLS in the early days, difficulties and challenges were everywhere.

A tornado tore through the Michoud Assembly Facility in 2017 and damaged two Michoud buildings; And yet, Hurricane Ida tore through the roof in September 2021, and the Covid-19 pandemic created major setbacks in the journey to building the SLS.

Not stopping there, according to NASA's Office of Inspector General, the agency has spent years fixing technical errors in the welding process and building solid propellant rockets.

According to a key NASA timeline from 2014, SLS is expected to cost about $9.1 billion to design and build for launch in November 2018. In June 2022, the Office of Accountability The US Government Accountability Task Force found that those costs had increased to nearly $11.8 billion, after a three-year delay because of the pandemic.

'It was a very uncomfortable time. By the end, SLS had overcame its worst nightmare. Then, finally, it stood at launch pad 39B of Kennedy Space Center, waiting for launch date." - Lori Garver, Former NASA Deputy Director from 2009 to 2013.

In March, NASA's Office of Inspector General estimated that overall NASA's Artemis Program will cost about $93 billion between October 2011 and September 2025, which includes 4.1 billion US dollars for each SLS launch (for at least the first 4 SLS launches) - according to Paul Martin, Inspector General of NASA's Office of Inspector General.

Experiencing many difficulties, SLS today stood on the launch pad, waiting for the day to take off. Although the SLS is successful in its journey to spaceflight, for those who stick with it, the emotions that come flooding back will be both pride and sadness. Why?

The "invisible" legacy of NASA's most powerful rocket

According to NASA, it will take even longer to complete the upgraded versions of the SLS rocket.

Currently, the SLS rocket (in its early version named Block 1) has greater thrust at take-off than the Saturn V rocket of the Apollo Program.

The upper deck of the SLS is a temporary model with engines that will only fly for three Artemis missions (Artemis I, II, III).

Starting with the Artemis IV, the SLS rocket will use a more powerful, four 'Exploration Upper Stage' engine that will enable the SLS to launch from 27 tons to at least 38 tons of cargo. Later, upgraded versions of the SLS rocket will be equipped with improved solid-fuel boosters, lifting the payload to the Moon to more than 43 tons.

NASA will need all of this additional SLS capabilities to build a space station in lunar orbit, just as planned once Artemis III is completed.

The space agency NASA also hopes to develop a research station on the Moon, using the final configuration of SLS known as "Block 2", which NASA's David Beaman, Director of the Office of Engineering & Integration SLS, called "The Mother of All Space Launch Vehicles".

History will have a lot to say about SLS and humanity's next space adventure.

SpaceX, the rocket company founded by Elon Musk, might disagree with that. In 2018, the company launched its own heavy lift rocket, the partially reusable Falcon Heavy, which can launch about 18 to 22 tons to the Moon for as low as $97 million.

SpaceX is also building an even larger rocket, called the Starship—unlike the SLS, which is designed to be fully reusable. If Starship is to work, it will allow large tonnage ships to be launched at unprecedentedly low prices. In the long term, SpaceX wants to use this rocket to establish a city on Mars.

However, the Starship is still just a prototype, and its full potential will only be achieved if it can refuel in orbit, something that has never been done before.

NASA officials emphasize that there is no competition between NASA and SpaceX, as both rockets (SLS and Starship) are critical to the success of the Artemis Program. The astronauts of the Artemis III mission to the Moon will leave Earth in the Orion spacecraft launched by SLS; and then transferred to the upper deck of Starship (which is the Starship system's spacecraft of the same name) to land on the surface of the Moon.

The success of Starship also depends on SpaceX's ability to land and relaunch its super-large rocket.

Regarding the first flight of the SLS, as planned, less than 2 minutes of flight time, the two solid-fuel boosters of the SLS will fall into the Atlantic Ocean, and unlike the space shuttle boosters, they will not be retrieved. again. About 8 and a half minutes after the journey, the core of SLS will split and fall into the Pacific Ocean. And just over two hours after launch, the upper deck of the SLS will separate from the Orion crew capsule and enter a lonely orbit around the Sun.

Every time parts of the SLS come apart, each time the SLS Orion launch mission represents its own success. 'Thinking about the fate of the SLS rocket parts is a bittersweet emotion. You won't be able to see and get those hardware back, but everyone knows, thanks to them, Orion was able to fly to the Moon. That intangible legacy is something we will always remember," said Boeing engineer Amanda Gertjejansen.

History will have a lot to say about SLS and humanity's next space adventure.