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Do not be afraid to save vacation time next year to Florida for the first launch of NASA's Space Launch System. The people who build it said this week that they did not think that SLS will take off until 2021 and probably not until the second quarter of this year.
SLS officials from Boeing and Northrop Grumman shared this timeline at an aerospace industry forum this week. Boeing is in charge of assembling the main stage of the rocket and Northrop Grumman is building the large solid-propellant rocket boosters that will provide most of the launch power of SLS on takeoff.
Boeing Vice President, Jeff Foote, cited the "Corporate Business Number at (NASA) Headquarters" as one of the timing factors. NASA's director Jim Bridenstine reassigned Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's long-time associate director for human exploration, this summer. Bridenstine cited President Trump's goal of bringing humans back to the moon in 2024 as he made the change.
"I think they're going to want to stabilize that" before moving on to the next stage of the schedule, Foote said at the forum. Bridenstine expressed similar opinions. This next step is the so-called "Green Run" test where the main stage of the rocket is fired on a test bench to check its behavior
The core should be completed at NASA's assembly plant near New Orleans and ready for the Green Run by the end of the year. It will be shipped by barge to the Green Run test bench at NASA's Stennis Space Center, where it will take a few more months to prepare for the test. "We will probably start it in the second or third quarter of (2020)," said Robert Broeren, head of Boeing's SLS team, at the same conference.
It will take even longer to evaluate the test and route the SLS core to the Kennedy Space Center launch site. "From (arrival at Kennedy), with Orion's integration, a wet suit rehearsal, and that sort of thing, probably two quarters ago, maybe two and a half, working to get to a date. launch, "he said. "So, probably early in 2021. It could happen sooner, later."
A "dress rehearsal" involves filling the SLS fuel tanks with liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen in the launch tanks to look for problems caused by this configuration.
The first SLS launch called Artemis 1 will send an unprepared Orion capsule around the moon for a three-week trip. The second launch, Artemis 2, will send astronauts aboard Orion on the same trip.
"If Artemis 1 is launched no later than the middle of 2021, it will have no impact on Artemis 2," Bridenstine told a senator this month, which questioned the timing and costs of the program. Is a realistic plan, but I'd like to have it up and engaged in an integrated schedule before taking a date. "
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