🚫 👩🏿‍🤝‍👨🏻 🔗 News from the USA on the lunar program "Artemis" (Artemis) 👩🏾‍🎨 🐠 🦉

What are Trump and Artemis preparing for us?

The question of exactly what the American space program Artemis is directed is not at all rhetorical. I wrote a long time ago (when the Artemis program was not yet) at Geektimes that politicians, especially legislators from the US Congress, often interfere in determining the exact goals of the space program for the next 10-15 years and the specific methods for achieving these goals. They add their "weighty word" (often based on political disassembly) and further complicate the old debate on the dilemma of space exploration: Where are we going to fly? To the moon or still to Mars? This intervention by US lawmakers in NASA's plans was repeated in January this year, which the first part of the article is devoted to .

NASA was shocked by the "persistent wishes" of the legislators and took a break. But there was information that the first flight to the Moon would do without docking with the Lunar Orbital Station (LOS) , since it would not be in time by 2024 (and it was necessary to catch it - Trump demanded it). There were doubts about the need for VOC itself: since the first flight will do without it, so maybe you should not hurry with it further? Doubts are based on a dilemma in the design / configuration of lunar modules for landing on the moon: will they be three-component or two-component? NASA 's Boeing contractor made its contribution , proposing not to bathe with the three-component lunar modulewith a transfer component for a flight from the distant orbit of VOCs to the low orbit of the moon. After all, you can deliver your more reliable two-component (landing + take-off) lunar module on the SLS 1B booster rocket right away - the Space Launch System Block 1B is a variant of the rocket with improved solid fuel boosters that provide 25% more thrust, which allows you to send to the moon not 26 tons of payload, but 35-37 tons.

The head of the NASA manned program Doug Loverro recently took a break to calculate the optimal configuration of the landing modules and promises to share the results of the calculations only in mid-April.

These constant pauses and revisions of NASA's “general line” are unnerving for NASA’s foreign partners. Therefore, the optimism of Roscosmos is very strange, which continued for years to declare allegedly "equal" cooperation with NASA in the lunar program, fully supporting the idea of VOCs, in which Roscosmos still makes only a gateway (and this is not a final agreement). Trump's decree on the rights of Americans to the development and use of space resources was a blow under the breath for Roscosomos. But the blow was quite predictable (this is clear even fromdecisions of the US Congress of 2015 on the extraction and sale of the resources of the moon and asteroids by American companies ). You don’t have to be so naive: in this world the tidbits always go to the fittest, and the contracts only draw up the actual state of things and allow you to avoid unnecessary and protracted conflicts that no one needs. Roscosmos’s naive statements about the allegedly aggressiveness of the United States look ridiculous, as they are addressed to a country that is entirely built on lands conquered by Aboriginal people (only 350-130 years ago), and now we are talking about open spaces and no one’s resources of the Moon.

It may happen that by putting too much dependence on the American program, on future visits of Russian ships to VOCs, which have not yet been agreed on (although 9 manned flights of the Americans under the Artemis program have already been planned before 2030), Roscosmos will lose the opportunity independently do something worthwhile in the lunar program, and then he discovers that the Americans have changed too much the concept of VOCs and the rules of "equal" cooperation. In this sense, Trump’s decree is a useful sobering soul on the heads of the leaders of our cosmonautics.

But at the beginning of April, good news for all supporters of the exploration of the Moon - NASA finally published a 13-page report on what they are specifically going to do on the Moon, what they will build there. This is the second part of the article .

1. The terrible bill of the US Parliament for NASA
- like about the mission to the moon, but they write about Mars ...

On January 22, 2020, the House of Representatives (HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES) of the US Congress issued its “bill” for NASA's future activities entitled:

To authorize the programs of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and for other purposes.

I did a simple statistical analysis: on 102 pages of this document, the word “Mars” occurs 109 times, and the word “Moon” occurs ... only 37 times! So, if in the orders to NASA the word "Moon" is used by American parliamentarians almost three times less, then for parliamentarians Mars is three times more important than the moon ...

Moreover: the word “Artemis” is not present at all in the document! Perhaps that is how parliamentarians expressed their attitude to the Artemis / Artemis program, as to Trump's brainchild. And Trump’s demand to fly to the moon exactly by the end of his second term (a brilliant decision in the sense of self-PR, but he needs to win the election this year), that is, in 2024, which is already included in the Artemis program, is also ignored there - for the first flight, for some reason, the year 2028 is indicated.

This document has a special section called Subtitle A — Moon to Mars Program.(p. 10). Already by the name it can be seen that the goal of even this section is immediately double. The speech in the section is actually only about the Artemis program currently being implemented, but again there is no such program in the text of the section. Reading the section, you can get a clear idea that in the understanding of American lawmakers the entire lunar program is clearly and rigidly tied to one main goal: to learn the most necessary things for flying to Mars, so that at the end of this program to fly to Mars. So it says: an intermediate goal to send a manned mission (what’s only one ?!) to the surface of the moon in 2028 and a goal to send a manned mission (again only one?) To the orbit of Mars in 2033:

the interim goal of sending a crewed mission to the lunar surface by 2028 and a goal of sending a crewed mission to orbit Mars by 2033.

The authors of the document are very optimistic about the timing of the flight to the orbit of Mars, pessimistic about the number of missions, but still realistically do not offer to immediately land on Mars!

On the same page, the objectives of the lunar program are directly described as prototype / preliminary activities (PRECURSOR ACTIVITIES), which include prototype manned missions to the lunar space and to the lunar surface, only to reduce the risk of manned missions to Mars :

precursor crewed missions to cis-lunar space and the lunar surface for the purpose of risk reduction for human missions to Mars by developing and testing those systems and operational practices needed for successful crewed Mars missions.

And then the program’s goals themselves are described (under the word OBJECTIVES. —The objectives of the human missions to Mars ) - of the three goals, two on Mars (by the way, not the exploration of Mars, but just research) and not a single target on the Moon.

A simple example of parliamentarians completely ignoring activities on the lunar surface: on page 22 there is an interesting subsection LUNAR IN-SITU RESOURCE UTILIZATION - “Use of lunar resources in place”. It would seem that this is an important part of technology (both for the exploration of the Moon, and for the exploration of Mars), the most important for the future use of the Moon, for example, the extraction (and thereby cheapening) of fuel for flights far from Earth. But in the text of the section it is expressly forbidden to engage in such matters within the framework of this program! Allegedly, this is not necessary for flight and landing on Mars, it does not reduce the risks of the initial manned missions to orbit and landing on Mars, therefore there is nothing to be distracted by this:

Lunar in-situ resource utilization shall not be considered as risk reduction for the initial crewed missions to orbit and land on Mars. Any lunar in-situ resource utilization activities and shall not be included in the Moon to Mars Program and shall be budgeted separately from the Moon to Mars Program.

Any work on the use of lunar resources on the spot should not be included in this program, they must be financed separately from this program .

Further, the section does not say a word about the base on the surface of the moon, lunar transport. There is nothing about this in the entire document, although logically this must be developed before 2028! But there are words about something that does not need to be developed until 2033 (since according to the document in 2033 NASA is not going to land on Mars), specifically about:

base (residential block) on the surface of Mars, (G) Mars habitats;
using the resources of the Martian atmosphere on Mars (for some reason, do not want to use other resources of Mars?) (I) in-situ resource utilization of the Mars atmosphere;
… (J) any other Mars-enabling technologies …

It was all mentioned on Mars in advance, long before 2033, and what was needed much earlier for the base on the Moon was not mentioned at all. Why? Because the American parliamentarians are clearly against the base on the moon - it distracts from the main goal, from Mars. This is clearly felt in the document.

In addition to all this, American parliamentarians in their document require an overwhelming number of technologies to be developed inside NASA (to leave the rights to technology completely in the hands of a state organization), and not to attract third-party commercial contractors, which NASA is doing now. Especially strong in terms of the development of the lunar module. This is very unpleasant for NASA - work with contractors has already begun.

The problem of this decree of parliamentarians is made directly in the title of the article of the web magazine “The Verge”: “A proposed House bill is threatening to rework NASA's plans to return humans to the Moon ” -“ The bill proposed by the House of Representatives threatens to remake NASA’s plans to bring people back to the moon ”
There is a subtitle: But there is a chance that it will not go further.

Because after the adoption by the House of Representatives this document still has a long way to go to the Senate - voting there is scheduled only for November. And then Trump can veto this largely disruptive document. But the fact of such fundamental changes in the NASA program scares many.

The document as a whole has already been opposed: The Planetary Society, Commercial Spaceflight Federation. Other organizations like the Aerospace Industries Association and Coalition for Deep Space Exploration want to revise many parts of the document.

Even NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine was frightened and tweeted: “I am concerned that this bill imposes some serious limitations on our approach to lunar exploration.” I am concerned that the bill imposes some significant constraints on our approach to lunar exploration .

He writes further that NASA needs more flexibility in the development of technical expertise, using the Moon as a testing ground: “If we are going to explore Mars in a safe and self-sustaining way, then we need strong abilities to develop resources on site and significant technological developments using the surface of the Moon. "NASA would be grateful for greater flexibility in defining work on the lunar surface, which could directly help the exploration of Mars."

And in the parliamentary newspaper “The hill” in the article “House panel proposes NASA bill that would scrap the lunar base - or maybe not” “The House of Representatives proposed a bill on NASA, which would send the moon base to the scrap - or maybe not"It is directly noted that all this fuss with a document from the House of Representatives for NASA is simply a slap in the face for the Trump administration. Although officially the document is a compromise between the Republicans and the Democrats, the spirit of the document shows that it was mainly the Democrats who hated Trump and his lunar program Artemis.

The article says that the construction of any base on the Moon according to the document is replaced simply by short missions to the Moon in the style of the Apollo program, the extraction and use of local lunar resources is unconditionally prohibited. During the heated debate, it seemed that they managed to agree with the NASA administrator that, with separate funding, not under the Artemis program, parliamentarians would allow the extraction and use of local resources to be higher (as can be seen from the text of the document). Trump's April 6 decree on the use of lunar resources is clearly his retaliatory strike against the parliamentary opposition of the lunar program.

2. NASA's optimistic plans: the base on the moon to be and be called "Artemis Base Camp"

And in response to the attacks of US parliamentarians, NASA’s leadership on April 2 (thank you for not April 1!) Came out with its (much more colorful and colorful) 13-page document: NASA's Plan for Sustained Lunar Exploration and Development - NASA’s (long-term) plan / relentless) sustainable lunar exploration and development .

In this document, the word "Mars" is also often found: 50 times, but the word "Moon" is more common: 69 times! And this is no coincidence. In this regard, NASA has a certain deviation to the moon, the constancy of the development of the lunar outpost, regardless of the timing of the flight to Mars, is emphasized.

The document for the first time named after itself the future American base on the moon: Artemis Base Camp - “ Artemis Base Camp ”. The word "camp" is a little embarrassing with its temporality, but still it is "basic." Moreover, at the first mention of this name, it is immediately said about the future long-term economic activity of people on the moon. After 3 pages of introduction, the document first emphasizes that the Americans will land on the moon again in 2024, and then: “ we will develop a stable, strategic presence at the south pole of the moon called the Artemis Base Camp (“ Artemis Base Camp ”). Over the next decade, our work at our Artemis Base Camp will pave the way for long-term economic and scientific activities on the Moon, as well as for the first human mission to Mars in the 2030s. ” For economic activity, Trump's decree of April 6, 2020 on the bowels of the moonthe most necessary and he was preparing for about a year.

On page 5, the contribution of the ISS and the current manned programs to the lunar program is mentioned, the already achieved and current Zero Level Goals are described .

Commercial contracts for automatic spacecraft

Page 6 discusses the first automatic missions to the moon as part of the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) performed by private contractors on their lunar spacecraft, more details here . The program for November 2019 already had 19 candidates for the title of contractors (including SpaceX with its future Starship).

It should be noted that the first three landing spacecraft (from three different contractors) with a commercial payload to study the lunar surface have already been planned for 2020-21 and are described here .

These are the following companies and spacecraft that have already received from NASA in the amount of $ 250 million:

OrbitBeyond for 99 million was preparing its lunar landing spacecraft Z-01 for flying on Falcon 9 in September 2020. But in July 2019, the company suddenly terminated this contract due to internal problems .
Astrobotic for 79.5 million will prepare the Peregrine lunar spacecraft with a payload of 265 kg for launch in June 2021, but has not yet decided on a launch rocket.
For 77 million, Intuitive Machines will prepare its unique Nova-C lunar spacecraft with the possibility of repeated flights over the lunar surface. Flight to Falcon 9 is scheduled for July 2021.

In the future, the approach of the CLPS program will be applied to supply the lunar base with large automatic cargo spacecraft, also created by NASA contractors.

VIPER

Further automatic missions will no longer be just stationary landing spacecraft, but Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) wheeled robotic lunar rovers designed to search for metal, ice / water, and break in the future in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) technology - resource extraction in place. The VIPER program is not commercial, carried out by NASA itself, the cost of 250 million was adopted instead of the old Resource Prospector program ( www.nasa.gov/resource-prospector ), canceled in 2018, after it spent 80 million (this lunar rover weighing in 300 kg was limited in capabilities and autonomy for 6-14 days ). More autonomous (up to 100 days) VIPER robots weighing 350 kg , also equipped with drilling equipment, will examine the regolith, taking samples from a depth of 1 meter. Starting from the end of 2022, VIPER robots will land in automatic landing modules interesting for future manned missions using the CLPS program and look for resources useful for the base there.

The first three missions of the Artemis program: testing SLS and Orion

Page 7 is dedicated to the first three main missions of the Artemis program:

Artemis I (April 2021) - the SLS rocket in its first flight will throw the Orion unmanned vehicle this time (and at the same time 13 cubsat) 280 thousand miles from Earth beyond the Moon, into the distant retrograde orbit of the DRO around the moon, with two spans of only 100 km from the lunar surface. The Orion ship will return and land on Earth after 26 days of flight.
Artemis II ( 2023) — 10 «» 4 . MTLI (multi-translunar injection) , 7000 , ( «») . «-8» 1968 .
Artemis III ( 2024) — 4 «» , ( ). «», — , 6-7 , ( ), , «» .

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About VOCs, see pages 8 and 10, but there is nothing new. Alas, the Russian contribution is mentioned underlined weakly: Russia only "showed interest in cooperation ... through a contribution in the form of a gateway" Russia has also expressed interest in cooperating on the Gateway via the contribution of an airlock. Given the delay in delivering the entire VOCs, it is obvious that in the first (or even second) phase of the Artemis program, you can do without this gateway at all - about which there is a very obvious picture of VOCs in a minimal working configuration compared to the picture of the complete VOC configuration .

Other NASA partners: Canada, Japan, ESA have already received VOC funding or announced an agreement with NASA. Everything seems to be the way here, but the deadlines can go too. Space will ship VOCs with Dragon XL automatic cargo ships launched on Falcon Heavy under Spaceway under the Gateway Logistics Services (GLS) contract .

The main components of the base on the surface of the moon

Pages 9-11 provide explanations about the base on the moon, the most interesting part of NASA's plan. The surface map in the upper right corner of page 9 hints that a place for the base has not yet been selected (6 potentially advantageous places with almost constant sunshine are indicated). Obviously, the choice of location for the construction of a permanent base will be made taking into account the resources discovered by robots and people.

Talking about the three main elements of the base, the authors of the text immediately specify that they will need to add additional infrastructure: communication antennas, power plants (solar panels), radiation protection, landing site, warehouses and trash. Only then can the base be lived and developed for decades. Here the reader is presented with an optimistic picture, where on the moon you can immediately see 4, not 2 people, which will positively affect the speed of work on the surface (two astronauts can rest at the base, and two work outside, increasing the total working time on the surface from 8-10 hours up to 16-20 per day).

So, in the text, three basic elements of the database are mentioned:

abandoned to the moon pre-opened rover LTV (Lunar Terrain Vehicle)
mobile housing or mobile residential platform ( Habitable Mobility Platform - like a sealed multi-wheeled all-terrain vehicle in which two people can travel tens of kilometers and live there for 30-45 days, leaving their spacesuits attached outside).
basic / basic housing accommodating 4 astronauts where you can live for months.

And also some auxiliary elements are needed: energy systems, demonstrators of the possibility of extracting resources on the spot, pilot plants for processing local resources.

Ideas for applying and expanding VOCs

On page 10, the Lunar Orbital Station (LOS) is again mentioned, of the 4 crew members arriving on the Orion, two will descend to the Moon, and two will remain on the LOS to do research on how to live in outer space during flights to Mars and back. A more cardinal test of survival in this deep space training ground is proposed: all four astronauts will live in VOC for several months to simulate a trip to Mars ( ... living aboard the outpost for a multi-month stay to simulate the outbound trip to Mars,) after which two briefly fly to the moon, and then they return and already with colleagues will fly to Earth. This is somewhat contrary to the previously mentioned idea to use four astronauts at once on the developed lunar base on the surface, but there is flexibility depending on changing priorities.

Also, VOCs can be expanded further by adding new modules and systems to the station that are identical to those that will be used to fly to Mars, running them in, training the future crew before launch.

Bright future on the Earth-Moon highway

The last section on the Vibrant Earth-Moon Future on page 11-12 indicates the importance of developing and refining new technologies on the Moon: extracting local resources, long-range reconnaissance, working with the ground and building, protecting against the lunar dust, protection from the extreme conditions of the moon (especially at night). Some of these technologies will be required immediately, some require a long work, but provide long-term advantages - such as a decrease in supply from the Earth through the extraction and production of local fuel, water, oxygen from local materials. An important task is the development of an advanced system of concentration of solar energy, the use of a small and light night-time power supply system based on nuclear decay, which is important for future missions to Mars.

Also important for the future are all technologies for the extraction, production and use of building materials for the construction of base buildings. Astronauts will test advanced robotic systems and will use them in their daily work.

Over time, a manned flying module may also appear in the Artemis Base Camp to deliver scientific and technological cargo across the moon. It will be controlled by astronauts from the base and refuel with local fuel extracted from regolith.

In time, Artemis Base Camp might also include a hopper that could deliver science and technology payloads all over the Moon and which could be operated by crew at Artemis Base Camp and refueled using locally sourced propellant.

Later, a radio-controlled telescope from the base can be installed on the far side of the moon.

To reassure fans of the flight to Mars, a NASA document below 12 and half page 13 says a few general phrases about the complexity and danger of the first flight to Mars and how important it is to fully prepare for it.

News from the USA on the lunar program "Artemis" (Artemis)