Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, NASA’s first female launch director, called her team to their stations in Firing Room 1 at the Kennedy Space Center and began the carefully planned countdown of 46 hours and 10 minutes at 10:23 am. EDT. The 322-foot-tall Artemis 1 Space Launch System rocket atop pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center is seen on Aug. 27, 2022, from the roof of the CBS News office, 4.2 miles away. The countdown began Saturday morning, setting up an 8:33 a.m. launch attempt. EDT on August 29, 2022, opening a two-hour window. William Harwood/CBS News “Right now, we’re not dealing with any major issues,” he told reporters at a pre-flight news conference. “Well, I’m happy to report and everything is going according to schedule.” Shortly after the briefing, lightning struck one of the three protective towers surrounding the SLS rocket on launch pad 39B. The strike led to a review of the data to ensure that sensitive electrical systems were not affected. If all goes well, engineers working by remote control plan to begin pumping 750,000 gallons of liquid oxygen and hydrogen fuel into the core stage of the giant SLS rocket at 12:18 a.m. a two hour window. Forecasters predict a 70% chance of good weather. The 42-day unmanned test flight of the $4.1 billion SLS rocket and Orion crew capsule is a major milestone in NASA’s effort to return astronauts to the lunar surface for long-term exploration and test the equipment and procedures needed to possible multi-year flights to Mars. “With the launch of Artemis 1 on Monday, NASA is at a historic turning point, poised to launch the most important series of scientific and human exploration missions in a generation,” said Bhavya Lal, NASA associate for technology, policy and strategy. “We are ensuring that the agency’s architecture for human exploration is based on a long-term strategic vision of a sustained US presence on the moon, Mars and throughout the solar system.” But mission manager Mike Sarafin warned: “This is a test flight. We’re mindful that this is a deliberate endurance test of the Orion spacecraft and the Space Launch System rocket. It’s a new creation, it’s a new rocket and a new spacecraft for to send men to the moon in the very next flight. “This is something that hasn’t been done in more than 50 years and it’s incredibly difficult. We’ll learn a lot from the Artemis 1 test flight… We understand there’s a lot of excitement about it, but the team is very focused.” One question mark entering the countdown is the condition of a 4-inch liquid hydrogen quick-disconnect fitting that leaked during a June 20 countdown practice and fueling test. The component was repaired after the rocket was transported back to NASA’s assembly building. However, hydrogen leaks typically don’t occur unless the equipment is exposed to cryogenic temperatures — in this case, minus 423 degrees Fahrenheit — and that won’t happen until refueling begins Monday morning. If a leak is found that violates safety standards, the launch will be cleaned up. But Blackwell-Thompson said she’s confident the placement will work out. “You don’t really do the full test until you do it in cryogenic conditions,” she said in an interview. “So we think we’ve done everything we can to fix this issue, and certainly on launch day, as part of our payload, we’ll know for sure.” Launch manager Charlie Blackwell-Thompson is seen in a file photo at her position in Firing Room 1 at the Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Control Center. NASA/Kim Shiflett The primary goals of the Artemis 1 mission are to verify the performance of the giant SLS rocket, put the Orion crew capsule through its paces, and bring it safely back to Earth, ensuring that the capsule’s 16.5-foot-wide heat shield it can protect returning astronauts from the high-velocity heat of reentry. An instrumented mannequin, “Moonikin Campos,” and two artificial female torsos will help scientists measure the radiation environment of deep space, along with vibrations, sound levels, accelerations, temperatures and pressures in the crew cabin as throughout the mission. If the flight goes well, NASA will move forward with plans to launch four real-life astronauts into free-return orbit around the moon in late 2024, followed by a mission to land two astronauts near the moon’s south pole as early as 2025. That flight will depend heavily on continued funding from Congress, the development of new spacesuits for moonwalkers and SpaceX’s progress in developing a lunar lander based on the design of the futuristic Starship rocket, which has no still fly into space. NASA managers say they are optimistic, but it is not yet known how realistic the 2025 landing goal might be. “We’re working as it is. We have to, or it ends up being an open question that we never get to,” said astronaut Randy Bresnik, who added that SpaceX is “working toward that pace as well.” “And that gives a lot of hope that if we’re going to get there, we have the right partner for that first mission,” Bresnik said. “The suits and the Starship, the lunar lander, everything goes hand in hand. We can’t have one without the other. So we’ll have more clarity in the coming months.” More William Harwood Bill Harwood has covered the US space program full-time since 1984, first as Cape Canaveral bureau chief for United Press International and now as a consultant for CBS News. It covered 129 space shuttle missions, every interplanetary flight since Voyager 2’s flyby to Neptune, and dozens of commercial and military launches. Based at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Harwood is a dedicated amateur astronomer and co-author of “Comm Check: The Final Flight of Shuttle Columbia.”
