- 9 months ago
This is an inside look at NASA's groundbreaking Artemis Program, the spacecraft, and the people who will bring humanity one step closer to the moon, Mars, and beyond.
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At GlobalStudy TV, we bring you inspiring and informative documentaries, stories, and videos from the world of education.
Whether you're a student, educator, policymaker, or simply curious about global education, you'll find valuable insights and compelling stories here.
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00:0050 years ago, America's last Apollo astronauts left the moon.
00:12In the five decades since Apollo 17, we have built space stations, space shuttles, and
00:19space telescopes, and sent probes further than the edge of our solar system.
00:33All this time, we humans have remained locked inside low Earth orbit, but today, with the
00:40most powerful rocket NASA has ever built, we are on the cusp of thrusting man and woman
00:48back out of low Earth orbit and onto the lunar surface once again.
00:55This is an inside look at the groundbreaking Artemis program, the rockets, the spacecraft,
01:04and the people blazing a new trail to the moon, Mars, and beyond.
01:11The first step, the launch.
01:26Between Apollo and Artemis, there's a lot of similarities, and some of that's just mostly
01:33based on physics.
01:34You especially look at the capsules, the same shape, big rockets, things like that.
01:39But program-wise, there's a huge difference.
01:41We're not just going for flags and footprints.
01:43The Artemis program is expanding upon what we did in the Apollo era.
01:48We want to go to the lunar surface.
01:50We want to build an outpost.
01:52We want to live on the moon in order to understand what it will take us to go to Mars.
01:58It's a much more deliberate approach to lunar exploration than the Apollo was.
02:05In the next decade, NASA envisions the beginnings of a long-term settlement on the moon, one in
02:11which a rotating cast of astronauts lives in a modular base camp, mining water and other
02:17resources from the moon itself.
02:20All while performing the kind of science that will help us in our quest to colonize Mars.
02:26So the success of Artemis 1 for the future of space exploration is really foundational.
02:32This planet-hopping journey into the future begins in 2022 with the scheduled launch of Artemis
02:39Mars 1, the first test flight of NASA's newest, most ambitious rocket yet, the Space Launch
02:47System, or SLS.
02:51It all starts here.
02:52It starts with the transportation system.
02:57Tipped with the Orion crew capsule, that transportation system stretches 322 feet from top to bottom
03:05and weighs nearly 6 million pounds.
03:08The rocket is so massive that NASA had to re-engineer its legendary launch pad 39B at Kennedy Space
03:15Center just to accommodate it.
03:1739B was there during Apollo and was the launch site for more than 50 space shuttle missions.
03:24But it didn't have the right stuff for Artemis.
03:28The launch pad is more than just a concrete platform.
03:32It is part of a larger Exploration Ground System, or EGS, where the rocket is assembled, transported,
03:39and ultimately launched from.
03:42Each of these elements needed a major physical and technological overhaul, beginning with the
03:48VAB, or Vehicle Assembly Building.
03:51When the vehicle is being stacked, we use platforms that basically surround the vehicle so the technicians
04:00could do all the testing and all the assembly of the vehicle.
04:05There's now 10 levels of platforms that were fabricated and installed just to process the
04:15Artemis rocket.
04:16Once assembled, the rocket will be coupled to its launcher and chauffeured 4.2 miles to
04:22the launch pad atop a newly restored and fortified Crawler Transporter.
04:29The Crawler Transporter was a piece of equipment that was created back in the Apollo program.
04:37The new SLS vehicle weights a lot more than the Apollo vehicle and a lot more than the shuttle.
04:47Once the rocket reaches the launch pad, it will be surrounded by three recently installed 600-foot-tall
04:53lightning towers, a technological shield against extreme weather that neither the Apollo missions
05:00nor the space shuttles ever had.
05:03Below the rocket, a redesigned flame trench, is the front line of defense against the SLS's
05:09massive burst of energy.
05:22The rocket's walls have been covered with 100,000 heat-resistant bricks.
05:26And in the middle of this 57-foot-wide, 43-foot-tall trench is the flame deflector, a newly constructed
05:33tower of engineered steel plates positioned precisely at a 58-degree angle.
05:40Its job, to protect the rocket by deflecting heat and pressure away from the launch pad.
05:45If we didn't have a flame deflector, the forces of the flame will go down and come back to
05:59the rocket and destroy the rocket.
06:04And heat and pressure are the only forces that could threaten the rocket.
06:08The flame trench is also there to dampen the 176 decibel blast of sound coming from the
06:15engines.
06:16A 450,000 gallon water tank will begin emptying into the flame trench at a rate of some 1 million
06:23gallons per minute, seconds before liftoff.
06:26It takes a lot of imagination to be able to build this kind of space.
06:27It takes a lot of imagination to be able to build this kind of space.
06:28It takes a lot of imagination to be able to build this kind of stuff.
06:57For the Artemis mission, using Apollo's Saturn rockets was never an option.
07:07One of the biggest differences between Apollo and Artemis is we're trying to get to the South
07:11Pole.
07:12Apollo did some fantastic science, but it was all in the equatorial regions of the near side
07:18of the moon.
07:19And that was where Apollo could get to.
07:22Getting to the South Pole takes more fuel, more power, and a mission plan that has never
07:27been attempted before.
07:29At the South Pole of the moon, you have permanently shadowed craters because the sun is very oblique
07:36at the bottom.
07:37So you get areas that never see sunlight where we might find water ice, volatile chemicals.
07:43Artemis 1's unmanned 26-day mission will chart a path for future Artemis astronauts.
07:51But it is the effort it takes to get off the Earth in those first few minutes of flight that
07:55is the reason the SLS is so massive and complex.
08:02The SLS rocket is an integrated system of multiple elements that are coming together.
08:09We have two boosters.
08:11Those are solid rocket boosters.
08:13And then we have the core stage, which is a liquid engine stage.
08:17And then we have the upper stage.
08:18So you actually light everything up, you get all that thrust going, and then you pull the
08:23hold down bolts off and it jumps off the pads.
08:26The two boosters give us over six million pounds of thrust for the first two minutes.
08:31And at that point, then it separates from the core stage.
08:34And then the core stage then goes on for another six minutes, giving us an additional over two
08:39million pounds of thrust.
08:41So that gets us into low Earth orbit.
08:43From there, the interim cryogenic propulsion stage takes over and delivers Orion into lunar
08:50orbit.
08:55The engines that will propel Orion toward the moon aren't the only ones built into the
08:59rocket.
09:01There are also multiple rocket motors built into the launch abort system, which is designed
09:08to pull the crew capsule to safety in case of emergency.
09:16And the Orion spacecraft itself has one main and eight auxiliary engines.
09:22Since this rocket has never flown before, each of these elements had to go through a rigorous
09:27test procedure prior to assembly.
09:30One of the first was to confirm that the core stage's 500,000-gallon liquid hydrogen tank
09:36could withstand the changes in pressure it might experience during a mission.
09:41We have hundreds of load cells that we apply onto the hydrogen tank itself, and it twists
09:47and turns and stretches the tank.
09:51The tank reaches the target pressure as planned, but the team wants to find out just how far they
09:56can push it.
10:03It's one of our engineers' dreams.
10:07They love breaking things.
10:15As launch day approaches, NASA tests the engines, which will play key roles in getting Artemis
10:20to the moon.
10:34They fire up Orion's launch abort and attitude control motors built into the tip of the rocket.
10:49And then Orion's main engine and eight auxiliary engines.
11:06Then it's the solid rocket booster's turn.
11:10Three, two, one, fire!
11:17Each of these engines passes its hot fire test.
11:26And last but not least, the core stage would finally be anchored into a test dam and ignited.
11:32The core stage is the backbone of the SLS rocket.
11:37Without the core stage, you wouldn't be able to launch this mission to the lunar surface.
11:43Inside the 212-foot-tall core stage are the brains of the SLS, its flight computers and avionic systems.
11:52At the base of the core stage is its broad, four RS-25 engines.
12:01Six barges worth of cryogenic propellants are loaded into the core stage's liquid hydrogen
12:06and liquid oxygen tanks.
12:09The countdown begins.
12:13Water gushes into the flame trench on cue.
12:16And then...
12:17We're going to turn your engine, sir.
12:21The burn is supposed to last 485 seconds, but just over a minute in...
12:27TDA, we did get an MCF on engine four.
12:37An MCF, a major component failure.
12:42And we've got to shut down for our personnel.
12:46The flight software did exactly what it was supposed to do.
12:49It shut the engines down because it detected that we were violating one of our limits.
12:54The engineers get to work on the problem and return to the test stand just two months later.
13:01And in this test, the engines successfully burned through more than 700,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen as planned.
13:14The core stage was ready for the launch pad.
13:17And the team was ecstatic.
13:19It was a very exciting day.
13:23After years of development and testing, the different components of Artemis I are brought together at last at the Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
13:50When we're assembling the spacecraft and the rocket and putting it all together, you have to do it very deliberately because in flight, there's an extreme amount of loads.
14:05There's a lot of vibration.
14:07You have to ensure there's no loose connections that are going to come apart in all of that violent shaking.
14:12Assembling the rocket takes months.
14:17The power of some 9 million pounds of thrust will be felt on every bolt, every electrical connection, every fuel line in the rocket.
14:27That surge of energy will be carried all the way to the top of the SLS in the new Orion Space Capsule.
14:35Atop Artemis I, Orion is following a trail blazed by the Apollo Space Capsule.
14:42But the similarities between the two only go so far.
14:47While Apollo could hold three astronauts for 13 days, Orion can hold four astronauts for up to 21 days.
14:55It's 1.5 times larger than Apollo.
14:58And unlike its predecessor, which only flew men under 6 feet tall, Orion is designed for a diverse astronaut core of men and women.
15:07Apollo, right, they were using a very small pool of candidates.
15:12Small in both physical sense and the numerical sense.
15:16For Orion, we actually designed it from a 5th percentile female to a 95th percentile male.
15:22We don't have to restrict the size of our astronaut pool for the future of exploration.
15:29On Artemis I, engineers will be keeping a close eye on Orion's crew.
15:34But on this flight, the crew won't be human.
15:38So inside Orion on Artemis I, there's going to be a few humanoid features.
15:43One of them, the Moonikin, as they've been calling him, is a fully outfitted crash test dummy.
15:49In addition, a pair of phantom torsos, nicknamed Helga and Zohar, will be on board to evaluate an experimental vest
15:59designed to protect astronauts from the elevated radiation levels they may encounter in space.
16:05I believe there's over 1,200 sensors outfitted on Orion to record things like the temperatures and the vibrations and the loads.
16:15There will also be radiation sensors inside the cabin so we'll be able to measure a bunch of what the crew will experience in the future.
16:22With the rocket now standing tall in the Vehicle Assembly Building, the day when it will be transported to the launch pad and ignited draws closer.
16:43That day may change the course of human exploration for decades to come.
16:50It has already changed the lives of the thousands of people who have worked on it to date.
16:55It's a beautiful rocket.
16:58I think a lot of people will be looking way up in the sky looking at how tall this rocket is and just be completely amazed.
17:05Finally seeing Orion on top of the rocket is just kind of wow, we did it.
17:09Like it's all finally come together.
17:11There's thousands of people that have been working on this for years, myself included.
17:16And to see it all come together finally, it's like a huge validation.
17:21It will be a great day when we see that first Artemis launch and everyone across the whole country needs to have a huge amount of pride for not only that day but also what the future means for America.
17:40This is America's rocket.
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