NASA's moon mission - ARTEMIS

[selvaarchi]

As we will be getting more news on the ARTEMIS mission, thought it more logical to have its own thread.

https://spacepolicyonline.com/news/m...-name-artemis/

NASA has finally given a name to its program to return astronauts to the surface of the Moon by 2024 — Artemis. JFK had the Apollo program. In Greek mythology, Artemis was Apollo’s twin sister. The announcement came at the end of a media teleconference where NASA explained its $1.6 billion FY2020 supplemental budget request to make that a reality.


The symbolism of the female name is obvious as White House and NASA officials constantly assert that the program will land the next man “and the first woman” on the lunar surface.

[slang]

Fun factoid: a company named Artemis recently sponsored Mark Beaumont world-recordsetting bicycle ride around the world in 80 days, a title from Jules Verne, who also wrote a little something about a moon landing once. Okay, maybe not that fun.

[bknight]

Fun factoid: a company named Artemis recently sponsored Mark Beaumont world-recordsetting bicycle ride around the world in 80 days, a title from Jules Verne, who also wrote a little something about a moon landing once. Okay, maybe not that fun.

Do tell, I haven't heard of him.

[bknight]

As we will be getting more news on the ARTEMIS mission, thought it more logical to have its own thread.

https://spacepolicyonline.com/news/m...-name-artemis/

I wish the endeavor God Speed Artemis.

[Barabino]

even funnier factoid: some people living 100 years ago were so obsessed with hunting that they christened "Artemis" even MALE children...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_Fowl --> a fictional character, but you got the idea

(i admit that I'm over-sensitive on this matter because my own name is a feminine one rushly turned to masculine - I'd prefer to have a name, like Peter or Dominic, that is 100% male )

editrs571723_2105800-lpr.jpg

[KaiYeves]

Well, it may have taken nearly sixty years, but at least we're going with the more mythologically-logical name this time around.

[bknight]

even funnier factoid: some people living 100 years ago were so obsessed with hunting that they christened "Artemis" even MALE children...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_Fowl --> a fictional character, but you got the idea

(i admit that I'm over-sensitive on this matter because mi own name is a feminine one rushly turned to masculine - I'd prefer to have a name, like Peter or Dominic, that is 100% male )

editrs571723_2105800-lpr.jpg

Then why not change it legally?

[Barabino]

after 47 years, i'm used to it, and moreover that would be a chore for my friends... forcing them to call me Peter B. (the original one, Peter M., died in a car accident 7 years ago )

[Roger E. Moore]

Sticker shock for Artemis has been hidden for now, but maybe we can have a betting pool on the preliminary cost. It will be huge. 37 launches....

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019...lunar-outpost/

[Roger E. Moore]

Explanation from Vox on what ARTEMIS is supposed to do.... but it does not look good to me. No money source, equipment not ready, no evidence that political will is there in the long term.

https://www.vox.com/science-and-heal...tine-explained

[bknight]

There a lot of hurdles still in the execution of a boiler plate design. I wish them well in their task, but problems like they are having with the booster isn't helping and getting the lander program up to speed are a couple of issues.

[selvaarchi]

"NASA unveils schedule for 'Artemis' 2024 Moon mission"

http://www.moondaily.com/reports/NAS...ssion_999.html

NASA on Thursday unveiled the calendar for the "Artemis" program that will return astronauts to the Moon for the first time in half a century, including eight scheduled launches and a mini-station in lunar orbit by 2024.

The original lunar missions were named for Apollo -- Artemis was his twin sister in Greek mythology, and the goddess of hunting, wilderness and the Moon.

Administrator Jim Bridenstine confirmed that Artemis 1 will be an uncrewed mission around the Moon planned for 2020.

Next will come Artemis 2, which will orbit Earth's satellite with a crew around 2022; followed finally by Artemis 3 that will put astronauts on lunar soil in 2024, including the first woman.

[Roger E. Moore]

NASA executive charged with strategic planning of return to the Moon has resigned after plan was rejected.

https://thehill.com/policy/technolog...er-appointment

[publiusr]

Sticker shock for Artemis has been hidden for now, but maybe we can have a betting pool on the preliminary cost. It will be huge. 37 launches....

ISS took 40 launches. And 26 of them STS, as per the wiki.

So, still do-able.

[selvaarchi]

"NASA selects first commercial moon landing services for Artemis Program"

NEOWatcher will be pleased with this as he wants "Speculate all you want but I want to see official statements, projects and estimated timelines, not discussions, hopes and speculations."

http://www.moondaily.com/reports/NAS...ogram_999.html

NASA has selected three commercial Moon landing service providers that will deliver science and technology payloads under Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) as part of the Artemis program. Each commercial lander will carry NASA-provided payloads that will conduct science investigations and demonstrate advanced technologies on the lunar surface, paving the way for NASA astronauts to land on the lunar surface by 2024.

"Our selection of these U.S. commercial landing service providers represents America's return to the Moon's surface for the first time in decades, and it's a huge step forward for our Artemis lunar exploration plans," said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine.

"Next year, our initial science and technology research will be on the lunar surface, which will help support sending the first woman and the next man to the Moon in five years. Investing in these commercial landing services also is another strong step to build a commercial space economy beyond low-Earth orbit."

[selvaarchi]

"Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) at NASA Headquarters calls on NASA to apply commercial crew lessons for Artemis"

https://spacenews.com/safety-panel-c...s-for-artemis/

As NASA starts development of lunar landers for Artemis, it should carefully incorporate the lessons learned from the commercial crew program, a safety panel advised.

At a June 6 meeting of the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) at NASA Headquarters, members said that while the new goal of landing humans on the moon by 2024 has benefits, that accelerated efforts must not jeopardize safety.

“The sense of schedule urgency can be positive and effective, but should not be a pressure that engenders decisions or actions that undermine mission assurance and safety,” said Patricia Sanders, chair of the panel. “Success will necessitate embracing lessons learned from models such as that used in the commercial crew program while still maintaining the fundamentals of effective design, system engineering and test.”

Among those lessons, they said, is how the agency can work effectively with commercial partners. “One of the key takeaways from the commercial crew program and a lesson for the future is the close interaction between the government program office and the contract partners,” she said. That includes shared responsibility and “mutual transparency” between NASA and the commercial crew companies, Boeing and SpaceX.

The use of non-traditional contracting mechanisms, like broad agency announcements and Space Act Agreements, is also another lesson the panel highlighted. Those approaches “can result in significantly lower development costs,” said ASAP member George Nield. “At the same time, that approach puts a lot more responsibility on the government to make sure that the requirements are correct at the start of the program and guarantee that there’s a way for the government to step in and appropriately respond to unexpected developments or technical surprises.”

[Roger E. Moore]

One thing I await in the literature is a more detailed discussion on the health hazards of breathing or ingesting lunar dust, of which there will be loads in future crewed lunar missions. Here are some older references that caused me concern.

===

https://arxiv.org/abs/1206.6328

Toxicity of lunar dust
Dag Linnarsson, et al. (Submitted on 27 Jun 2012)

The formation, composition and physical properties of lunar dust are incompletely characterised with regard to human health. While the physical and chemical determinants of dust toxicity for materials such as asbestos, quartz, volcanic ashes and urban particulate matter have been the focus of substantial research efforts, lunar dust properties, and therefore lunar dust toxicity may differ substantially. In this contribution, past and ongoing work on dust toxicity is reviewed, and major knowledge gaps that prevent an accurate assessment of lunar dust toxicity are identified. Finally, a range of studies using ground-based, low-gravity, and in situ measurements is recommended to address the identified knowledge gaps. Because none of the curated lunar samples exist in a pristine state that preserves the surface reactive chemical aspects thought to be present on the lunar surface, studies using this material carry with them considerable uncertainty in terms of fidelity. As a consequence, in situ data on lunar dust properties will be required to provide ground truth for ground-based studies quantifying the toxicity of dust exposure and the associated health risks during future manned lunar missions.

===

http://cdsads.u-strasbg.fr/abs/2016AdSpR..58..560R

Lunar nanodust: Is it a borderland between powder and gas?
Rosenfeld, E. V.; Korolev, A. V.; Zakharov, A. V.
Advances in Space Research, Volume 58, Issue 4, p. 560-563. (08/2016)

There is still no clear understanding of the mechanism responsible for two lunar dust peculiarities. Firstly, tenuous clouds of dust grains amazingly soar at an altitude of about a meter above the sunlit surface. Secondly, lunar dust has a powerful devastating effect on various materials. Here, we show that thermal fluctuations may be both the cause of the low-altitude levitation and the main ;damaging factor; of lunar dust. Indeed, fine particles should soar above hot surface and the presence of nanoparticles with enormously varying mass values provides the most efficient use of thermal energy to break bonds between nanoscopic structural elements of target material. These features must be intrinsic to any nanoparticle assemblies in the absence of large conglomerates that are sure to arise in terrestrial conditions.

===

https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/ast.2014.1216

Free-Radical Chemistry as a Means to Evaluate Lunar Dust Health Hazard in View of Future Missions to the Moon
Francesco Turci, et al.
Published Online: 18 May 2015 -- https://doi.org/10.1089/ast.2014.1216

Lunar dust toxicity has to be evaluated in view of future manned missions to the Moon. Previous studies on lunar specimens and simulated dusts have revealed an oxidant activity assigned to HO· release. However, the mechanisms behind the reactivity of lunar dust are still quite unclear at the molecular level.

===

https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/ast.2012.0950

Neurotoxic Potential of Lunar and Martian Dust: Influence on Em, Proton Gradient, Active Transport, and Binding of Glutamate in Rat Brain Nerve Terminals
Krisanova, Natalia; Kasatkina, Ludmila; Sivko, Roman; Borysov, Arseniy; Nazarova, Anastasiya; Slenzka, Klaus; Borisova, Tatiana
Astrobiology, vol. 13, issue 8, pp. 679-692 (08/2013)

The harmful effects of lunar dust (LD) on directly exposed tissues are documented in the literature, whereas researchers are only recently beginning to consider its effects on indirectly exposed tissues. During inhalation, nano-/microsized particles are efficiently deposited in nasal, tracheobronchial, and alveolar regions and transported to the central nervous system. The neurotoxic potential of LD and martian dust (MD) has not yet been assessed.

===

http://cdsads.u-strasbg.fr/abs/2019AcAau.157..134M

Self-cleaning spacesuits for future planetary missions using carbon nanotube technology
Manyapu, Kavya K.; Peltz, Leora; De Leon, Pablo
Acta Astronautica, Volume 157, p. 134-144. (04/2019)

Lunar dust proved to be troublesome during the Apollo missions. The powdery dust got into everything, abrading spacesuit fabric, clogging seals and other critical equipment. Even inside the lunar module, Apollo astronauts were exposed to this dust after they removed their dust coated spacesuits. The lunar dust is comprised of fine particles, with electric charges imparted by solar winds and ultraviolet radiation. As such, it adheres readily, and easily penetrates through the smallest crevices into mechanisms. While efforts are under way to figure out how to return astronauts to the Moon and set up habitats for long duration missions, the issue of lunar dust remains relevant. Consequently, NASA has identified dust as a critical environmental challenge to overcome for future planetary surface missions characterized by dusty environments.
Several concepts were successfully investigated by the international research community for preventing deposition of lunar dust on rigid surfaces (ex: solar cells and thermal radiators). However, applying these technologies for flexible surfaces and specifically to spacesuits has remained an open challenge, due to the complexity of the suit design, geometry, and dynamics. In our research, we developed a SPacesuit Integrated Carbon nanotube Dust Ejection/Removal (SPIcDER) system to protect spacesuits and other flexible surfaces from lunar dust. SPIcDER leverages the efficient Electrodynamic Dust Shield concept developed at NASA for use on solar cells. It is customized for dust mitigation on flexible surfaces, using novel materials and specialized design techniques. The result is a self-cleaning spacesuit that can repel lunar dust.
This paper provides an overview of the SPIcDER system and showcases our working prototypes, ranging from coupons to a scaled portion of a lunar spacesuit segment. The design is supported by parametric analysis in ANSYS Maxwell for optimizing SPIcDER integration into the spacesuit outerlayer. The paper emphasizes design considerations for astronaut safety, based on analysis and experimental results. The SPIcDER system can be optimized efficiently for potential missions to Mars and asteroids, as well as for Earth based applications.

[selvaarchi]

Now we have a dollar figure - US20-30 billion. I would say that is on the low side but I am no accountatt.

https://spacenews.com/bridenstine-es...20-30-billion/

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in a television interview June 13 that it will cost the agency an additional $20 billion to $30 billion to return humans to the moon, the first range of costs given by the agency for the program.

In an interview with CNN, Bridenstine said that estimate would be above earlier projections for costs of existing elements of what’s now called the Artemis program, such as the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft

“For the whole program, to get a sustainable presence on the moon, we’re looking at between 20 and 30 billion dollars,” he said. “When we talk about the 20 to 30 billion dollars, it would be 20 or 30 billion on top of the normal NASA budget but, of course, that would be spread over five years.”

[Noclevername]

Now we have a dollar figure - US20-30 billion. I would say that is on the low side but I am no accountatt.

Until the bills get paid, I'm skeptical of promises.

[selvaarchi]

"nature" magazine questions "Can NASA really return people to the Moon by 2024?"

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02020-w

Five decades after sending humans to the Moon, NASA is tasked with repeating the feat — and doing it by 2024, the ambitious deadline set by US President Donald Trump’s team. But it is unclear how the space agency will surmount some formidable technical, political and financial challenges to pull off a lunar landing in just four and a half years.

“If the pieces come together in the right way they can pull it off,” says Ryan Watkins, a lunar scientist with the Planetary Science Institute in St Louis, Missouri. “But they have to come together.”

NASA’s leaders have yet to make key decisions about how the Moon effort, called Artemis after Apollo’s twin sister, will proceed. The agency does not have a rocket ready to fly humans into deep space, and it has not developed a lunar lander since the Apollo programme ended in 1972. Then there is Congress, which controls NASA’s budget and seems increasingly uninterested in paying for the Moon mission.

[selvaarchi]

“NASA Exploration Plans: Where We’ve Been and Where We’re Going.”

This was the topic at a hearing for USA Senators on July 9 2019.

https://spacenews.com/challenges-ben...f-exploration/

The United States has the advanced technology and capable workforce it needs for further space exploration. However, it lacks the focus and prioritization that assured the success of the Apollo program, Apollo flight director Gene Kranz told Senators July 9.

“We have an administration that is strongly supportive of space and willing to provide the resources,” Kranz said July 9 at a Senate Commerce science and transportation subcommittee hearing. “We have an agency charted to do the mission, top level leadership in place and a very capable workforce. But each of the segments are philosophically divided on the goal.” Without greater unity, the U.S. space exploration program “will be grounded,” he added.

Kranz was one of the NASA veterans and industry leaders who discussed the Apollo program and the benefits and challenges of future missions at the hearing, “NASA Exploration Plans: Where We’ve Been and Where We’re Going.”

NASA plans to return astronauts to the lunar surface by 2024 and to establish a sustainable human presence on the moon by 2028 through the Artemis program. To achieve those goals, NASA will need $1.6 billion in additional funding in 2020 and an additional $4 billion to $6 billion per year above current funding levels after that, said Mary Lynne Dittmar, Coalition for Deep Space Exploration president and CEO.

“While funding increases are always a political challenge, it is worth noting that the benefits of ten times that amount in adjusted dollars invested in the Apollo program are evident to all, and form the foundation both for today’s national effort and for the growing entrepreneurial sector,” Dittmar said.

[selvaarchi]

Still waiting for Artemis 1 schedule update, official decision on SLS Green Run it is already the middle of summer!!! or were they referring to the Australian spring.

https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2019...sls-green-run/

A flurry of initiatives announced early in March to find a way to fly Exploration Mission-1 by this time next year were supposed to be complete by now, but NASA has not announced findings or decisions on speeding up schedules and eliminating typical development testing. All of NASA’s internal reviews of the pre-launch assembly and production work content, integrated schedules, and overall cost estimates for the first two integrated missions, now called Artemis 1 and Artemis 2, were advertised to be complete by the end of the Spring.

Major assembly of the Artemis 1 hardware elements could be completed in the next month, with mating of the Crew Module and Service Module of the Orion spacecraft for the mission expected in July and mating of the engine section to the rest of the first Space Launch System (SLS) Core Stage possible around the end of the month. Although NASA’s internal recommendation a few months ago was to ship Core Stage-1 to the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi and conduct the Stage Green Run test, the civilian space agency’s political leadership will make the final decision on schedule vs. testing.

[selvaarchi]

"“Apollonauts” reflect on lunar landing and return to the moon"

https://spacenews.com/apollonauts-re...n-to-the-moon/

The engineers who developed the computers that enabled the Apollo 11 lunar landing had little doubt the mission could be a success, and half a century later have advice for how NASA should return to the moon.

In the 1960s, the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory had a NASA contract to develop the Apollo Guidance Computer, one of the first portable digital real-time computers, used on both the command and lunar modules. Engineers took advantage of emerging technologies from that era, like integrated circuits, to develop a system that guided Apollo to the moon and to six successful landings on the lunar surface.

The facility, now known as Draper and spun out after Apollo as a nonprofit organization, is marking the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 with a “Hack the Moon” exhibition recalling its role in developing the Apollo Guidance Computer. At a media event at its headquarters here July 9, several of the engineers — dubbed “Apollonauts” by Draper — discussed their experiences developing the computer.

[selvaarchi]

To me, this announcement by NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine, spells bad news for the mission. It looks like Bill Gerstenmaier and Bill Hill where pessimistic about achieving the 2024 target with the given resources. Jim Bridenstine did not like the news and has decided to replace them with people, more in tune with the ambitions of his boss.

Please note the above is my assessment from reading the article.

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3758/1

This is a week NASA planned to focus on its past, not its future, until the present intervened.

This is the week that the 50th anniversary celebrations of Apollo reach their climax. Events around the country will commemorate the launch of Apollo 11 and its landing on the Moon, from the Space Coast of Florida to Seattle’s Museum of Flight. In Washington DC, a series of events are planned at the National Air and Space Museum and on the National Mall, including a light show that will project a full-sized Saturn V rocket onto the Washington Monument.

But late last week, all the space community could talk about was not the upcoming celebrations but a shakeup a few blocks from the National Air and Space Museum at NASA Headquarters. Late Wednesday, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine announced in an internal memo that he was reassigning two top officials involved in NASA’s exploration program. Bill Gerstenmaier, the longtime associate administrator for human exploration and operations, would now be a special advisor to deputy administrator Jim Morhard. Bill Hill, deputy associate administrator for exploration systems development, was similarly reassigned to be a special advisor to associate administrator Steve Jurczyk.

That memo offered few details about why Gerstenmaier and Hill were being reassigned—effectively demoted, if not fired, in the eyes of most within NASA and in the space industry. “As you know, NASA has been given a bold challenge to put the first woman and the next man on the Moon by 2024, with a focus on the ultimate goal of sending humans to Mars,” Bridenstine wrote. “In an effort to meet this challenge, I have decided to make leadership changes to the Human Exploration and Operations (HEO) Mission Directorate.”

Few, if anyone, saw such a change coming. On Wednesday morning, Gerstenmaier testified before the House Science Committee’s space subcommittee at a hearing about NASA’s low Earth orbit commercialization strategy. Nothing seemed amiss in his testimony, and Gerstenmaier lingered after the hearing ended, talking with committee members and other attendees.

It certainly took members of that committee by surprise. “I was surprised about the administrator’s announcement,” said Rep. Kendra Horn (D-OK), chair of the space subcommittee, in a statement Thursday, adding she was “concerned about the impacts that such abrupt leadership changes in our nation’s human spaceflight programs could have.”

[publiusr]

I liked the gerst.

[selvaarchi]

"A Few Things Artemis Will Teach Us About Living and Working on the Moon"

http://www.moondaily.com/reports/A_F..._Moon_999.html

Humans have not had much of an opportunity to work on the Moon. The 12 Apollo astronauts who got to explore its surface clocked in 80 hours in total of discovery time. From their brief encounters, and from extensive analyses of Apollo samples and lunar meteorites that were found on Earth, scientists have learned nearly as much as is possible to learn about the lunar environment without much contact with the surface.

Now, for the first time in half a century, NASA's Artemis missions will allow scientists and engineers to examine the surface from up close. This will teach us how to move safely across lunar soil, known as regolith; how to build infrastructure on top of it; and how to keep humans safe in space. The techniques scientists will develop on the Moon will make it possible for humans to safely and sustainably explore farther destinations, such as Mars.

Here are a few things we'll learn by spending time on the Moon's surface:

[Roger E. Moore]

How much will Artemis-1 cost? We won't know until 2020, and it won't launch until well after 2021

https://spacenews.com/artemis-cost-e...dy-until-2020/

[selvaarchi]

PopularMechanics on "What Would a 21st Century Moon Base Look Like?"

https://www.popularmechanics.com/spa...nasa-moonbase/

NASA's Artemis program, along with the Lunar Gateway, is singularly focused on humanity's return to the moon. But unlike the Apollo program, NASA will be leaning on companies to provide a lot of the hardware and know-how. And some of them have already submitted designs.

Piecing together these disparate visions for humanity's first off-planet outpost, we get a slowly evolving picture of what a lunar colony might look like.

[selvaarchi]

Reading the latest issue of the space review article "And now, the next 50 years", there is not much support for human space exploration from the American public.

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3764/1

That’s because, despite the outpouring of interest in the Apollo anniversary, public support for human spaceflight is not that strong. A poll in May by the Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research asked the public to identify what it thought the top priorities for the space program should be. At the top, 68 percent of people said that monitoring asteroids and comets that could pose an impact threat was very or extremely important, followed by performing Earth and space science, at 59 percent. Nearing the bottom was sending astronauts to Mars (27 percent) and returning astronauts to the Moon (23 percent).

A similar poll, released by C-SPAN and Ipsos earlier this month, offered a similar assessment. Asked to select two top priorities for US space exploration, 52 percent selected Earth science while 32 percent chose improving national security. A human mission to Mars (18 percent) and a human return to the Moon (8 percent) were at the bottom.

[selvaarchi]

NASA has awarded contracts to SpaceX, Lockheed, Blue Origin and others, to support the ARTEMIS mission.

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2019...5651564521242/

NASA on Tuesday announced new contracts with 10 companies to help send people back to the moon by 2024, as well as to Mars afterward.

The landing contracts, which include new deals with SpaceX, Lockheed Martin, Sierra Nevada and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, will see each of the companies work with NASA to accomplish both space exploration goals.

NASA, as part of the deals, provides expertise, facilities, hardware and software at no cost. The public-private partnerships and the way they are structured are vital to accelerating space exploration, NASA said in a news release.