Stennis Space Center’s role in NASA’S Artemis One
When Artemis One launches later this month for a flight to the moon, employees at Stennis Space Center can take pride in knowing they were a major stepping stone in that project.
Stennis Space Center has a big role to play in NASA’s Artemis One launch on August 29th. Artemis One is the first test that combines both NASA’s space launch system and Orion Spacecraft.
The success of a crewless, wide orbit around the moon will validate the design and safety for a human exploration mission in the future.
The Aerojet Rocketdyne Facility at Stennis is a home for assembly and testing of major engines. Aerojet Rocketdyne Stennis General Manager Mike McDaniel said, “At this facility, what we’re actually doing where we assembled the RS-25 engines, which are the engines that’s gonna be the booster engines for the space launch system Artemis program, taking our astronauts to the moon, and then on to Mars.”
McDaniel says the testing is done in-house before sending the flight engines to New Orleans assembly and then to Kennedy Space Center in Florida for the finishing touches.
Now that we know the process and details of how these engines are made, we’ll head to the area where they’re tested on site. NASA Safety and Mission Assurance Engineer Elizabeth Calantoni said, “We’re really proud here at Stennis because the core stage for that article was tested here a couple years ago. So, it arrived early January 12th, 2020. We completed hot fire testing, there were multiple tests leading up to that 8-minute-long hot fire test and it was refurbished and packaged to send to Kennedy in April of 2021 and so we’re excited to see this test article that we worked so hard on.”
Calantoni said it is a South Mississippi, South Louisiana project that is taking us back to the moon and they are honored to be a part of it.
Artemis One is a demonstration test to show the vehicle is ready to take astronauts which will hopefully lead to Artemis two and then three where the first female and astronaut of color will be sent to the moon.
They will be the first moonwalkers since Apollo 17 in 1972. The long-range plan is to ultimately send astronauts to Mars.
