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00:10Artemis 1 was incredible. It was an iconic mission.
00:16I was able to watch the launch of Artemis 1, and I'll never forget, I just turned into
00:20a small child and I just was screaming at the rocket for about 30 seconds.
00:23That is our generation, the Artemis generation, that defines the starting point of our exploration.
00:30The next thing is getting ready to fire the crew on Artemis 2.
00:34This mission paves the way for sustained missions on the moon and then Mars.
00:39We've got space flight vehicles that are done at the Kennedy Space Center that are being
00:43built and integrated. We've got components of the rocket that are being assembled.
00:47We have international partners. We have commercial partners and industry partners.
00:52We've got the designs ready to go, how we're building up the operations.
00:55It's real. The team is ready to go.
00:58Four names, four explorers, answering the call to once more rocket away from Earth and
01:06chart a course around the moon.
01:09This is the mission of Artemis 2.
01:23never before had man traveled so far, so fast, or looked so closely upon another celestial
01:33body. That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.
01:40Apollo was so amazing because we didn't know we could do it. The Apollo generation showed what
01:47was possible.
01:49For me personally, I think it's an important endeavor to return to the moon. And as we look
01:55towards Mars, the moon is going to be an important staging area for us to learn quite a bit.
02:00The longest we were ever on the moon as humans was 72 hours. We have a lot to learn yet.
02:06And as we leave the moon in Taurus Littrell, we leave as we came, and God willing as we shall
02:14return, with faith and hope for all mankind.
02:25The Artemis campaign is really a set of test flights. We haven't been to the moon in over 50 years,
02:32and so there's a lot of new systems that we need to test out.
02:35We're going to a new part of the moon, the south pole that we've never been to before with crew.
02:40The Artemis 2 mission is going to take the next step in our flight test campaign.
02:47We're going to focus on what are the new systems that we need to test out so that we can
02:53fly crew to the moon and safely bring them back home.
02:57That really sets us up for our big goal, which is the return of human crew to the surface of
03:05the moon.
03:06It's so important what we learn in that mission to the moon because it instructs us on how we're going
03:11to get to Mars. This is a generation-defining effort.
03:19My name is Jeff Radigan. I'm the lead flight director for Artemis 2.
03:23Here in Mission Control, I direct the operations of the spacecraft and communicate with the crew on board in order
03:29to have a successful mission of a first mission back to lunar space in over 50 years.
03:33We want to get back out to lunar space. We want to fly around the moon, and so to be
03:37a part of that is just very meaningful to me.
03:40It's something I get excited about when I wake up in the morning. It really is the next step in
03:44space exploration.
03:50This room has a lot of historical significance. We originally flew the space shuttle out of here, and we're looking
03:56forward to flying Artemis 2 out of this room here in the not-too-distant future.
04:01Once the vehicle clears the tower, control of the spacecraft is handed over to Mission Control Houston.
04:05At that point, the team in Mission Control, led by the Ascent flight director, will take over.
04:09It's a very distributed team. Think of it as a big pyramid. At the top of it sits the flight
04:13director, but around him are specialists in every system on Orion.
04:18They'll have teams in the front room that are working with the flight director.
04:22They'll have teams in the back room that are supporting the front room operators to make sure that they're specialists
04:26in all of their systems just in case we have a problem that we haven't seen.
04:30And by the way, in my 20 years of human spaceflight experience, I guarantee you we're going to have a
04:34problem that we haven't seen.
04:36My name is Natasha Peek. I'm a flight dynamics officer for Artemis 2.
04:41We are trajectory specialists when it comes to Orion. Really, my job is to know where your spaceship is and
04:46where it's going.
04:47And if we need to come home for some reason, come home early, or we get off track, our job
04:52is to figure out how to do that.
04:53This mission is fundamentally different from a mission you might do in low Earth orbit in a lot of ways.
04:58But one of them is that we're looking to rendezvous with the moon. Every minute you wait to launch, the
05:03moon is moving.
05:03So in order to rendezvous with it efficiently, we have to change the inclination of our orbit to make sure
05:08we line up with the moon.
05:10In a month, you get about 14 days of a launch period. Our team all hunkers down, and for every
05:15day, we look at the open and close of the window
05:18and come up with a trajectory end-to-end, from liftoff all the way through splashdown.
05:30You know, I often talk about that launch ops is like a team sport. It's certainly you have to produce
05:37on game day, but that the preparation for a championship begins in the off season.
05:42We've made some significant upgrades since Artemis 1, and that includes not just the software that you see out here
05:49running on the consoles, but it's also in our model and simulation environment.
05:54The big difference between Artemis 1 and Artemis 2 is, of course, the crew.
05:59And it's the systems, the new systems that are specifically in place to support a crewed flight.
06:05And so we have new launch commit criteria, we have changes to our procedures, changes to our timelines, and we
06:10want to make sure that we've gone through those time and time again,
06:15so that when launch day rolls around, we're ready for anything that the hardware may throw at us.
06:21We woke up this morning, went through medical checks, had breakfast as a crew, while Charlie and her team were
06:27getting the simulated vehicle ready for launch day.
06:30We got in our crew transfer vehicles, our CTVs, we came out to the pad, we went up two elevators
06:36to the 274-foot level, and we met there, our white room closeout team.
06:41So it was a great end-to-end run-through of what we will do when we get on this
06:45vehicle and head to the moon.
06:47There are no shortcuts, I mean, you have to do it all, because on launch day, that is game day.
06:54And it is in all of our work together that gets us to a successful T-Zero and a safe
07:00and successful mission.
07:15The seriousness of what it takes to take the risk with humans in and of itself creates enough of a
07:21pressure for the entire organization, enough of a concern, enough of a sense of rigor, everything goes up a notch.
07:27We have to have an atmosphere to breathe, a temperature to be able to control, to be able to take
07:31out the carbon dioxide, the humidity that's in the air, feed the crew, deal with a small environment, proving that
07:36we can fly by the moon and come back and have a safe re-entry.
07:40There's an extra element when you have humans on board, the nuances by which the system operates, the understanding of
07:46what it is to live in this crew module that we have.
07:50Artemis II is also another flight test of the other systems that are required to enable human space exploration.
07:57That is life support system, that is displays, that is the controllers, the stick that you need to fly a
08:04spacecraft.
08:04All those pieces were not part of Artemis I, but are really key for Artemis II, and the crew will
08:09need that capability to go forward to do human space exploration.
08:14When you go to the moon, you're 250,000 miles away, and there's no choice. It takes time to get
08:20home. Everything we check, everything we try and make sure we understand, we double, we triple, we quadruple check, because
08:25we want to make sure we get it right.
08:27The mission will prove the Orion spacecraft is ready to keep astronauts alive in deep space and allow the crew
08:34and ground teams to practice operations essential to the success of future missions.
08:38This top portion is the crew module, it's the pressurized area where the crew sits. The bottom portion here, with
08:45the solar arrays and the engines, primary engines, is what's called the service module.
08:50The European Service Module, or ESM, will provide electricity, water and air to NASA's Orion crew capsule, as well as
08:58maintaining temperature for life support.
09:01It's been a fabulous partnership with our ESA partners. The agency made a decision a long time ago that we
09:06want to do lunar exploration as a global partnership.
09:11Now that we're having crew, that's the new element for Artemis II and onwards.
09:15We will really go into the testing of the life support systems and try to figure out how is that
09:21behaving with the astronaut in the loop.
09:23How is the CO2 scrubbing working on the crew module side? How are we providing the oxygen to the astronauts
09:29and the water?
09:30That environmental control system is so complicated. It's a series of chemical and mechanical and electrical engineering problems that all
09:37have to come together.
09:38That spacecraft has to basically be a mini Earth, and that Earth is basically driven by the elements of that
09:43life support system.
09:44We also have crew interfaces with the crew piloting the vehicle. Artemis I was uncrewed, and so we're going to
09:50go do a check out right at the beginning of the mission while we're in an Earth orbit to be
09:54able to ensure that the crew is able to successfully pilot the vehicle.
09:58We're not just testing the systems in Orion. One of the key things we really want to do is we're
10:04going to do science.
10:06When we think about Artemis II science, there are really three big areas that we're studying.
10:12One is understanding the space environment. The second is understanding how that environment interacts with life and humans and the
10:19systems.
10:20And then the third is looking at the moon itself from an vantage point where humans haven't looked for over
10:2650 years.
10:27They're going to be describing what they see. They'll see things that human beings have never seen before.
10:32They'll be describing, observing, and documenting what they see for the scientists back home.
10:36They've done a significant amount of training in the field here on Earth, learning about geology and planetary scale processes.
10:45They'll be looking for the evidence of those processes from orbit and describing to us anything unique that we maybe
10:52haven't been able to really sense with orbiters and robotic measurements.
10:56We're also going to do human research on the crew members themselves. We haven't had data sets for over 50
11:04years on how the physiology of the crew themselves adapt to the radiation environment, to the microgravity environment, so far
11:13away from Earth.
11:18When you think about Artemis II, we've never had humans get on top of an SLS rocket.
11:24And when that rocket launches, 8.8 million pounds of thrust are going to defeat gravity for a 5.8
11:32million pound vehicle.
11:34So they're going to feel vibrations and hear sounds that no humans have ever experienced.
11:38If you want to be an astronaut, that's the thing you've been waiting for your whole life.
11:42Riding the elevator up the rocket, climbing in that capsule, very surreal.
11:46I often say that the only reason anybody actually gets on a rocket is because it'd be too embarrassing to
11:50turn around and run away from the rocket.
11:52Once the fire starts coming and the rocket starts vibrating and you lift off, it's a completely different experience.
11:58When you put crew on a rocket, it's no longer a test flight.
12:01This one needs to perform and will perform as good or better than the first one did. No doubt about
12:08it.
12:12Artemis II begins with a launch from Kennedy Space Center.
12:18Getting them through that eight and a half minutes to get them to escape Earth will be the first big
12:22milestone.
12:24First, you'll do about two minutes of flight with the boosters.
12:27The boosters will separate, leaving you on just the core stage all the way through about eight minutes into the
12:33mission.
12:33At that point, the upper stage will separate from the core stage and perform a perigee-raise maneuver to keep
12:39you in a stable orbit.
12:41The crew's going to be in a high Earth orbit, checkout orbit.
12:44So this is a highly elliptical orbit that just takes them up away from the Earth and then back down
12:50close to it.
12:51From there, Orion backs away and separates from ICPS, preparing us for manual piloting by the crew of the Orion
12:58vehicle,
12:59imagining that they are approaching and docking with the upper stage of the rocket.
13:04The crew will have their hands on, flying it for the first time.
13:07And that will allow them to see, do we have the pulse size correct?
13:11Do we need to make the pulse size smaller? Do we have enough thrust?
13:13Does it have enough control authority to give us the rates and the movement that we need to in the
13:18vehicle when we need it?
13:19We need to really understand how Orion's going to perform in order such that we can dock it on future
13:25missions.
13:27We're going to fly in formation for a good two hours to ensure that we can do the checkouts to
13:32really understand the way this vehicle is going to operate.
13:37As we do ascent and as we go through our ProxOps demo, it's going to be a long day for
13:41the crew, it's going to be a long day for us on the ground.
13:45Once we convince ourselves that the systems are solid, we will engage the Orion main engine and that will commit
13:50us to what we call translunar injection.
13:52The translunar injection burn is the big burn that puts us on the path to the moon.
13:57For that flyby out to the moon, we're doing what we call a free return trajectory.
14:00The idea there is that without doing any more major burns, you can just coast and the gravity of the
14:06moon will redirect Orion and bring it back to Earth safely.
14:09Hey Apollo 13 Houston, you have a go for all systems.
14:12We have done a free return only one time and that was during Apollo 13.
14:15We have designed deliberately to do a free return on this particular mission because again, our risk tolerance, our willingness
14:21to take risks with the vehicle with the crew on board is much, much lower for a crewed test flight.
14:27The next three days are spent in transit and so the crew has activities to again, continue to check out
14:32the systems on the Orion that we weren't able to get to in the first day.
14:35We need to go through checking out the radiation shelter that all of our stowage is in the right spot.
14:40We need to check out the cabin to ensure that we can depress it to be able to dock within
14:44HLS in the future.
14:45Then we're going to fly around the moon.
14:50You'll fly by the moon at about flight day five.
14:53You'll be between 2,900 and 7,900 nautical miles from the lunar surface.
14:57That'll be the first time we'll have four crew members being able to share the experience of seeing the far
15:03side of the moon together.
15:04They'll be the most separated from Earth than any four humans could possibly be at that point.
15:10We're going to turn the spacecraft so that you can have the best view of anybody of the moon in
15:1350 years.
15:14We want to ensure that we're getting the videos of the moon that all of us back here on Earth
15:19want to see and ensuring that all of our systems work on the far side of the moon as well,
15:24the way we expect.
15:26Once the crew flies past the moon, they'll begin the three day journey home where they'll again begin to do
15:31some checkouts, including trying to take the cabin down to a lower pressure, which is needed for future flights.
15:38Finally, as they get closer to Earth, they're going to prepare for reentry.
15:41We have to configure the cockpit, do our final targeting, final burns, get the crew in their suits, get them
15:46in their seats, and then they'll get into the reentry sequence.
15:52The back half of the crew module has the heat shield, which is covered right up until just before what
15:58we call entry interface, when you're reentering the atmosphere.
16:00At which point, the crew module separates from the service module, puts the heat shield towards the Earth, and then
16:06begins its entry.
16:08The way Orion enters the Earth's atmosphere, it's a capsule shape, and when that capsule engages with the atmosphere, it
16:14hits at a tremendous speed.
16:18The speeds that we're enduring produce temperatures as hot as 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit, which is close to the surface
16:24of the sun.
16:25The way we protect and absorb that energy is we build a heat shield. That heat shield serves as a
16:30function to transfer and absorb that energy so that, you know, ultimately we can come down gently on our chutes.
16:38That 19-ish minutes is the most critical of a flight. That heat shield has to work, the guidance has
16:43to put them in the right spot, and if we're anywhere as close as we were on Artemis 1, we're
16:48going to drop that capsule within a couple miles of the landing ship.
16:51Splash down.
16:53We're going to land off the coast of San Diego in the Pacific Ocean, and we're going to test out
16:58in real, real space, in real time, the recovery of crew from the capsule.
17:03So all of these are new things that we haven't had to do before in a long time.
17:07They'll be recovered by our recovery forces, and we'll see their smiling faces.
17:14That's the mission. That's Artemis 2.
17:27We learned a ton on Artemis 1. A lot of just how the vehicle works and how to fly it,
17:32especially from our perspective.
17:34When SLS cleared the tower at Pad B, we put Orion exactly where it needed to be. The upper stage
17:39conducted a perfect burn.
17:41Orion spent an incredible retrograde orbit around the moon achieving a distance further than any spacecraft designed to carry humans
17:48had ever been.
17:48And when it came back to Earth, it performed the first ever skip re-entry of a vehicle.
17:55For Artemis 1, the number one priority mission objective was a test of the heat shield on Orion for lunar
18:01return.
18:02Orion conducted the final major maneuver of its mission, a return trajectory correction burn of its thrusters to further fine
18:09-tune its path toward its splashdown site in the Pacific.
18:14One of the biggest learnings we had from Artemis 1 was how the thermal protection system was able to perform
18:20during re-entry.
18:21We looked at the heat shield, and there were little chunks of that char that were missing.
18:26And we didn't really understand that, and we thought that wasn't predicted.
18:30What happened is some of the heat shield material started to break off, and that we think could happen a
18:36little bit, but you don't want to happen too much.
18:38Our decision has been made first around safety on the heat shield, as we understand and mitigate the risks that
18:47come with space flight.
18:49Sometimes in space, delays are agonizing, and slowing down is agonizing, and it's not what we like to do.
18:56But from the crew perspective, the thing that we most asked our leadership for after Artemis 1 was root cause
19:04of the ablation of the heat shield.
19:06We had an independent review team with a lot of outside experts and internal experts to look at this.
19:11So we really appreciate the willingness to take the risk to actually slow down and understand root cause, determine the
19:18path forward, corrective action for Artemis 2 and Artemis 3,
19:21so that when Victor, Christina, Jeremy, and I launch and land after a successful Artemis 2, we will look to
19:28Artemis 3 to carry the torch forward and to put humans back on the moon, and that is really our
19:32ultimate objective.
19:35Had the crew been on Artemis 1 in the Orion heat shield, they would have been safe.
19:39This was certainly an area that we knew we wanted to test out.
19:43One reason why, of course, there were no crew on Artemis 1s, we could test out that heat shield, but
19:47we wanted to make sure we understood that problem.
19:49And we did an enormous number of tests to confirm that under specific conditions, yes, we can fly it safely.
19:55But in the future, we want to take this learning and not only apply it to safely flying Artemis 2,
20:00but to changing how we design and build the heat shield for the Artemis 3 and beyond.
20:06This is what we do. We are ready for it. This is how we work. This is how we learn.
20:13It will be a 10-day journey going half a million miles, continuing to test out every bit of Orion,
20:20going around the far side of the moon, heading home through the Earth's atmosphere at over 25,000 miles per
20:27hour, and splashing down in the Pacific.
20:30The crew is going to have a horizon, they have a moon, so I feel pretty good about pressing into
20:36this opportunity.
20:36I think NASA is at its best when it has big ideas and bold exploration. That's when the finest comes
20:43out of NASA, that's when the finest comes out of America.
20:45Their story is made up of the success of this institution that makes this country so proud.
20:52For Orion, success means, first, we bring the crew home. Second, we demonstrate what we know already is a robust
21:00spacecraft that's ready for these Artemis missions.
21:03We want to continue to explore. We want to continue to learn. We want to go beyond. We want to
21:08go even further.
21:09And through the success of this particular mission of Artemis 2 will help spur us on for the additional exploration
21:16and discoveries that are out there for us to find.
21:19Our destiny is always to go and see what's further and what's next.
21:23It's our generation's opportunity to have our own literal moonshot.
21:27When we focus on one thing and we focus on it together, we can achieve anything.
21:31It's the lesson that we can do more together than we can as individuals.
21:36It's a new beginning. It's a rebirth of human exploration.
21:40The question is no longer if we're going to return to the moon or reach Mars. It's a matter of
21:44when.
21:45It starts with one flight. One crew. Artemis 2.
21:50We all have batons. Relay race batons. And they are there as a symbol of coming back from Artemis 2
21:55and handing those batons to Artemis 3 and saying it's your turn to go.
21:58That is what we live for. We are ready.
22:15So, let's look at this.
22:15And for the first thing you may get, you can touch the earth.
22:15And when you are ready.
22:15I'm ready.
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