SLS, Boeing news roundup
NASA’S plans for future space exploration could be in jeopardy due to a cut to the SLS program.
There could also be a potential cancellation of the Exploration Upper Stage, or EUS, a more powerful upper stage for the SLS rocket, which could impact the Artemis missions. The EUS, known as the Exploration Upper Stage, is a rocket used on NASA's Space Launch System to carry payloads on missions like Artemis.
Eric Berger, Senior Editor at Ars Technica, said, “I think the biggest immediate concern from Boeing’s perspective involves the Exploration Upper Stage, or EUS. This is the more powerful upper stage.”
Berger said that while flying Artemis II and III on the SLS and Orion would be the quickest way to get humans to the Moon, there is also a desire to cut government waste. It’s unclear what will happen to SLS and the Artemis mission as the Trump administration takes a look at costs of programs across federal agencies. In other Boeing news, the company’s Starliner program is under scrutiny after a test mission last year failed to return the maiden crew.
NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunni Williams are now coming home in SpaceX’s Dragon capsule. According to Berger, “They are going to come back in March a few weeks earlier than it was previously plan.”
The main issue is finding a ride for their replacement crew. Crew-10 was supposed to fly to the space station on a new Crew Dragon spacecraft, but that vehicle had battery issues during processing and isn’t ready. It likely won’t be ready until late April, so NASA is swapping it out for another vehicle. As a result, Crew-10 is now set to launch no earlier than March 12, followed by the return of Willmore, Williams and the other two members of Crew-9 about a week later.
While NASA’s Artemis II mission is delayed until next year, there will still be plenty of things to talk about when it comes to space news – and NASA’s plans to get humans back to the moon. Berger said, “There is going to be a lot of action on the moon, in addition to those space policy halls of Washington, DC.”
One moon experiment took a spin
Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft went for a spin – for science. It’s the first time the uncrewed vehicle performed a spin maneuver midflight, which mimicking lunar gravity inside the capsule for a handful of science experiments.
John Z. Kiss, a plant space biologist and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs at Florida Tech, has worked with NASA and the European Space Agency on experiments growing plants in microgravity.
Kiss said, “This is the first time Blue Origin has tried this approach of spinning the entire capsule.” During the mission, different gravity levels were observed, but the lunar gravity remained very stable at one-sixth of Earth's gravity.
Although, Lunar gravity was the focus, a wide range of gravity levels were experienced during the mission. A period of microgravity and free fall occurred before the capsule was set into rotation. The variety of gravity levels makes the experiment even more valuable.
“The most direct result is going to be how the water and other kinds of fluids percolate and make their way through the lunar regolith,” Kiss said. “A secondary goal would be we need to also understand the fluid dynamics within a plant, because that's very important.”
He also discovered that lunar gravity and microgravity were similar. But while growing plants on Mars may be easier than on the moon, Kiss noted that experiments like this will help future lunar missions—even permanent missions if humans live on the moon.
“The good news is, if we're going to grow plants on Mars, gravity is not going to be an issue,” Kiss said. “There are lots of other issues, namely radiation. We need to understand radiation biology, particularly the interaction between radiation and the fractional reduced gravity. However, growing plants on the moon might be more challenging, because that behaves like microgravity,”
