Moonikin Campos(Commander, full mannequin), with two mannequin torsos called Helga and Zohar for the three crew.
two hour window starts at 80% chance of launch with a closing window at 60% chance of launch - at time of writing. Link shows what's what needed in regards to launch weather criteria.
NASA TV will start around 2:30pm today with the fuel loading.
Moonikin Campos will sit in the commander's seat. Under the seat are sensors to measure acceleration and vibration to help assess what human crew members might experience during a flight. Campos will be all decked out in the official Orion Crew Survival System spacesuit that will include two radiation sensors.
Helga and Zohar are manikin torsos made up of materials that mimic human bones, soft tissues and adult female organs. A big part of their mission involves radiation detection and measurement.
Zohar will wear a radiation protection vest, called AstroRad, while Helga will not," NASA said in a description of the manikins' duties. "The study will provide valuable data on radiation levels astronauts may encounter on lunar missions and evaluate the effectiveness of the protective vest.
A plush Snoopy will serve as a zero gravity indicator to show the team on the ground when the spacecraft reaches weightlessness.
Last edited by Hans Tucker; 29-08-2022 at 07:07 PM.
160,127 watching now Started streaming on Dec 29, 2018 Direct from America's space program to YouTube, watch NASA TV live streaming here to get the latest from our exploration of the universe and learn how we discover our home planet. NASA TV airs a variety of regularly scheduled, pre-recorded educational and public relations programming 24 hours a day on its various channels. The network also provides an array of live programming, such as coverage of missions, events (spacewalks, media interviews, educational broadcasts), press conferences and rocket launches. In the United States, NASA Television's Public and Media channels are MPEG-2 digital C-band signals carried by QPSK/DVB-S modulation on satellite AMC-3, transponder 15C, at 87 degrees west longitude. Downlink frequency is 4000 MHz, horizontal polarization, with a data rate of 38.86 Mhz, symbol rate of 28.1115 Ms/s, and ¾ FEC. A Digital Video Broadcast (DVB) compliant Integrated Receiver Decoder (IRD) is needed for reception.
Edit: You can also watch via the NASA TV app, which is available on Android, IOS and Windows devices, as well as pre-installed on some streaming boxes (e.g. Fetch, AppleTV).
I believe they can't get correct cool down on engine 3 also weather is ouside limits. Just announced a launch scrub.
Looks like 2 Sept is the next launch window.
Inside Artemis 1’s complex launch windows and constraints
In a 1 Nov 2021 article by Philip Sloss, he attempts to explain the
constraints that go into the launch window calculations for Artemis 1.
Suffice to say the various constraints are mindbogglingly complex
and involve - yes, you guessed it - real rocket science :-
Quote:
Originally Posted by Philip Sloss, nasaspaceflight.com
When the flight hardware and ground systems are finally ready for the inaugural Artemis 1 launch to the Moon, NASA will also have to synchronize the timing of the flight with unique celestial mechanics. The Orion and Space Launch System (SLS) Programs in the Exploration Systems Development (ESD) division are working together to calculate when the Earth, Moon, and sometimes the Sun are all in the right positions to support the agency’s requirements for this first joint Orion-SLS test flight.
In general, NASA will have daily opportunities to launch this first Artemis mission to the Moon in an approximately “two weeks on, two weeks off” pattern. On a particular day that has a launch opportunity, the Exploration Ground Systems (EGS), Orion, and SLS programs will have a launch window that will vary from a few minutes to a few hours.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Philip Sloss, nasaspaceflight.com
Formerly called Exploration Mission-1, this first combined test flight for the three programs in ESD plans to send an uncrewed Orion spacecraft on a cislunar Distant Retrograde Orbit (DRO) trajectory.
...
This flight to a DRO has its own set of launch constraints. “There’s just a handful of key drivers that we [use to] determine whether or not there is a launch opportunity on a given day for Artemis 1,” Mike Sarafin, NASA’s Artemis 1 Mission Manager, said in a September interview.
“The further you get into the manifest, the constraints will change because we need to account for things like lighting for [lunar] landing and docking and some other things, and so I’m just going to speak [about] Artemis 1. I would expect some of these to be in play for later missions, but there actually may be additional constraints.”
For Artemis 1, the opportunities tend to repeat about once every two weeks, with a launch period of about 10-15 consecutive days. This is then followed by about two consecutive weeks without a daily launch window before the next launch period begins.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Philip Sloss, nasaspaceflight.com
Sarafin explained that there are four major factors that determine whether or not there is a launch window available for Artemis 1 on a particular day. This is primarily driven by the available performance of the SLS Block 1 vehicle.
“We’re specifically trying to hit our Trans-Lunar Injection point, and there are days where the Earth-Moon alignment do not support launching with the Interim [Cryogenic] Propulsion Stage [ICPS] or the Block 1 vehicle,” he said. “So performance is our number one constraint.”
“[The] number two constraint is the Orion spacecraft should not exceed greater than 90 minutes of eclipse during any point in the mission, and that’s for power production and thermal reasons. We’re using solar arrays to produce power, the batteries are sized based on that as well as a few other constraints, and then also the thermal system.”
Within the 10- to 15-day periods that have a daily opportunity to launch, there may be a day or two “cut out” by the 90-minute maximum eclipse time constraint for Orion. “Occasionally [you] have this odd seasonal constraint that comes along where the Sun is behind the Earth during the outbound transit to the Moon or during the return transit that [eclipse time] exceeds 90 minutes. And just the angle of the solar eclipse from the spacecraft’s standpoint causes an odd day to be cut out every now and then,” Sarafin explained.
The third constraint is that Orion must splashdown in lighted conditions, which aids recovery operations. Artemis 1 will be Orion’s first re-entry from the Moon, providing a high-priority test objective for the Orion Program.
“For this uncrewed flight test, we’re trying to hit a lit landing, so that governs where we have at least a half an hour before sunset or we land at least an hour after sunrise, that drives some of our launch opportunities,” Sarafin said. “The last constraint is essentially the allowable range between entry interface and the splashdown target zone.”
“For a skip re-entry, we want to fly somewhere between 2,500 and 4,000 nautical miles [approximately 4,630 and 7,408 km] range from entry interface to splashdown, and we’re nominally targeting around 2,800 nautical miles [5,185 km]. If we get shorter than that, it’s going to exceed some of our test criteria, and if we get longer than that, again it’s outside of our test criteria as well as the vehicle design.”
“So performance, eclipse, lighting for landing, and then range from entry interface to splashdown, those are the four things that we screen against to determine whether or not we can launch on a given day for Artemis 1,” he said in summary.
The initial Block 1 configuration of the SLS launch vehicle utilizes the ICPS, a modified United Launch Alliance (ULA) Delta Cryogenic Second Stage (DCSS) used on their Delta IV rocket. The ICPS acts as an in-space second stage above the SLS’s five-segment Solid Rocket Boosters and Core Stage. The SLS boosters and Core Stage insert ICPS with Orion on top into a parking orbit that is unstable and highly elliptical, with a low end – or perigee – within Earth’s atmosphere but with a greater-than-usual high end – or apogee.
For Artemis 1, the SLS Core will be targeting an insertion orbit of 30 x 1,806 km.
“The ICPS does not have the capability to throw an Orion massed vehicle to lunar vicinity from a low Earth circular parking orbit, so the SLS Core Stage assists the ICPS/Orion stack with insertion into an elliptical parking orbit,” a NASA paper on SLS launch windows notes. “The apogee of that parking orbit is a dial that can be used to transfer performance from the Core Stage to the ICPS or vice versa.
“Later, when we get the Exploration Upper Stage (EUS) [with] the Block 1B vehicle, we will not have that constraint to get to the Trans-Lunar Injection (TLI) point, and it’s because we have to loft the trajectory with the Interim Cryo Propulsion Stage to achieve the performance that we need to hit that specific point in space for Trans-Lunar Injection,” Sarafin noted. For future SLS launches using EUS, the currently in-development stage will insert into a circular parking orbit of about 185 km.
“The circular parking orbit allows the future configurations of SLS to send spacecraft to the Moon on virtually any day of the month,” the NASA SLS launch window paper notes. “This is necessary as other [future] mission constraints, like rendezvous in lunar vicinity, may restrict the launch availability.”
There are also other performance factors, such as the bulk temperature of the solid propellant in the SLS boosters, which are affected by local temperatures that vary from season to season. The boosters typically have better performance at higher ambient temperatures that occur around the summer months at the launch site in the Northern Hemisphere.
In addition to the constraints on which days will have launch opportunities, the daylight splashdown/recovery requirement at the end of Artemis 1 will also dictate the duration of the test flight. If necessary, Orion can extend its stay in lunar orbit to ensure it splashes down in daylight.
“The mission does vary between what we generally term a ‘short-class mission’ which is about a 25, 26, 28 days or what we’ve generically termed a ‘long-class mission’ which is somewhere between 38 and 42 days,” Sarafin explained. “Within a launch period, we will switch based on the day that we launch from long class mission to short class mission, so it’s really dependent on the day that we go whether we’re short class or long class. And it all has to do with that three-body problem and the alignment [of the Sun, Earth, and Moon].”
The orbital period of the DRO is about 12 days, which dictates the length of Orion’s stay at the Moon. The overall mission duration will be between four and six weeks. Notably, both mission durations are longer than the spacecraft’s maximum limit with a full crew of four onboard – 21 days. Orion’s systems are capable of operating up to around 210 days in an uncrewed configuration, such as on Artemis 1.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Philip Sloss, nasaspaceflight.com
Day of launch windows
For windows of opportunity on a specific day, the length of the launch window can range from minutes to hours. “We have ‘day of’ [launch] performance constraints, and it’s a bit like a bell curve or a sinusoid,” Sarafin said. “So if you’re early in the launch period, you have a relatively short or long launch window, depending on your set up coming into it, and then it will oscillate the further you get into the window.”
“Based on the data that I’ve seen, [the windows vary] anywhere from a really short window, like six minutes in duration where we meet those four constraints that I gave you before, or they go up to a maximum of a two-hour launch window that we could set up for on any given day.” There are days where the launch window extends for even longer than two hours but there are other operational and vehicle considerations that, at least for Artemis 1, will limit launch attempts to a maximum of a two-hour window on a given day.
“That’s a self-imposed maximum duration for a couple of different considerations,” Sarafin explained. “If we’re not going to make that day, we need to detank, inert the tank, and then reconfigure the vehicle and set up for the next opportunity.”
Liquid propellant loading (and unloading) for the SLS vehicle is one of the main considerations outside of celestial mechanics.
It's a few years old but I think it's one of the best. Episode 3, about the development of the navigation computer software and hardware, is very good.
Inside Artemis 1’s complex launch windows and constraints
Sorry, what did you say your hobby was again?
