
NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) has finally cleared the last significant hurdle in the preparations to launch the first of the vehicles on its much anticipated lunar flight.
On Friday, June 24th, agency officials declared the test campaign for the maiden vehicle to be almost complete after it finally cleared the critical wet dress rehearsal (WDR) test on a fourth attempt – the first three in May each ending with issues that forced NASA to roll the vehicle and its mobile launch platform back to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at Kennedy Space Centre, Florida, so both could receive modifications.
The final dress rehearsal started on June 20th, and concluded 20 seconds early due to a leak in a hydrogen bleed line. While this did not compromise the test itself, it did prevent 13 of the planned 128 command functions from being performed as a result. Most of these had been previously tested, so the curtailing any testing of them during the WDR was not seen as cause for concern.
However, mission managers opted to perform one additional test prior to rolling the vehicle back to the VAB for final inspections and launch preparations. This will be a test of hydraulic power units used to gimble the nozzles of the vehicle’s solid rocket boosters to provide directional guidance while the boosters are firing. One it has been completed, the roll-back to the VAB will be carried out on July 1st.

At the VAB, the vehicle and its launch platform will undergo a final post-WDR inspection, which will include replacing the seal responsible for the hydrogen leak. It’s expected that overall, the final check-out plus any required work will run through until early August. Providing nothing serious is found, the vehicle will be rolled back to the pad to commence 10-14 days final launch preparations. This will be in time to meet two immediate launch windows: August 23rd through September 6th (excluding the period August 31st-September 1st) and September 19th through October 4th, 2022.
The Artemis 1 mission is designed to fly an uncrewed Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) on 20+ day mission to cislunar space including 6 days in lunar orbit. It will be a preliminary check-out of Orion’s life support, propulsion, guidance and communications systems during an extended mission, prior to repeating the flight with a crew on board with Artemis 2.
CAPSTONE
On Monday, June 27th, NASA will be launching another mission to cislunar space.
The Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE), is a 25 kg cubesat the size of a microwave oven designed to study what is called a lunar near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO) – an extended elliptical orbit around the Moon that will bring the satellite to within 1,600 km of the lunar surface before lifting it away to up to 70,000 km. It is a similar orbit to the one that will be used by NASA’s planned Lunar Gateway station.
While extreme, such an orbit allows for continuous communications with Earth and allows for extensive study of the Moon. When placed in a similar orbit, Gateway will allow astronauts to reach almost any point on the lunar surface using suitable landing systems.

CAPSTONE is due to be launched from New Zealand aboard a Rocket Labs Electron rocket at 10:00 UTC om Monday, June 27th, 2022. As the Electron is not capable of delivering CAPSTONE directly to the Moon, it will use the company’s Photon kick stage to push the cubesat into an extended 4-month flight to the Moon, where it will enter orbit on October 15th. The extended, slow flight will allow CAPSTONE to carry out a range of tests prior to reaching the Moon and is not reflective of the kind of transit time crewed flights will require to reach lunar NRHO (5-10 days).
Once in orbit around the Moon, CAPSTONE will spend a further 6-months studying the NRHO environment around the Moon and in communication tests both with Earth and with NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been orbiting the moon since 2009.
SpaceX Triple Header with a Touch of Mystery
SpaceX carried out three near “back-to-back” launches over the weekend of June 17th-19th, albeit from different launch complexes:
- On Friday, June 17th, a Falcon 9 lifted-off from Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Centre, carrying aloft the company’s latest batch of Starlink satellites for deployment.
- On Saturday, June 18th, a Falcon 9 lifted the SARah-1 radar imaging satellite to orbit on behalf of the German military, after lifting-off from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
- On Sunday, 19th, the third launch lifted-off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, ostensibly to place the commercial Globalstar FM15 into a “parking” orbit as a back-up for the company.

While all three saw the successful return and landing of the Falcon 9 first stage of each booster, the June 19th mission has raised eyebrows due to the apparent secrecy around it. The Globalstar FM15 is a relatively small satellite – just 700 kg – which should have allowed the Falcon first stage to return to the SpaceX landing zone at Canaveral; instead it landed on a drone ship at sea, suggesting it was flying a heavier payload that required greater thrust to push it to orbit.
SpaceX also did not cover the launch with anything like the kind of live streaming they generally put out for their launches; what footage that was put out suggested the vehicle was carrying an additional payload adaptor, hinting at a further payload – although nothing has been said to confirm or deny this.
Continue reading “Space Sunday: SLS, satellites and a rover”