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All Artemis I secondary payloads installed in Rocket’s Orion stage adapter
Status report of: NASA HQ
Posted: Tuesday October 5 2021
Technicians loaded the last of 10 CubeSats into the five-foot-high Space Launch System (SLS) rocket Orion stage adapter at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. After the Orion spaceship separates from the SLS rocket for a precise trajectory to the moon, payloads the size of a shoebox are released from the Orion stage adapter to carry out their own science and technology missions.
The main objective of SLS for the Mission Artemis I is to successfully send the unmanned Orion spacecraft into lunar orbit where it can test critical space systems, then return to Earth to test the spacecraft’s heat shield at lunar reentry speeds. The Orion Stage Adapter connects the rocket to Orion and contains space inside the adapter to provide a rare opportunity to send the CubeSats into deep space using extra lift capacity when the unmanned mission. CubeSats will study everything from the Moon and asteroids to the radiant environment of deep space. Each CubeSat provides its own propulsion and navigation to travel to various deep space destinations.
Nine of ten CubeSats were loaded into the adapter earlier this summer. The last CubeSat to be placed on board was BioSentinelle, the only CubeSat among this group of satellite payloads that contains a living microorganism, and which has been refrigerated until loading in order to preserve its biological content as long as possible for the mission. The main goal of BioSentinel is to detect and measure the effect of space radiation on living organisms – in this case yeast – over long periods of time beyond low earth orbit. A similar experiment is underway on the International Space Station so that research teams can compare the effects of radiation felt on the station about 250 miles above Earth with those seen in deep space near the Moon, over 240,000 miles.
Developed by NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, California and the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Loma Linda University Medical Center, and the University of Saskatchewan, it is among the earliest studies on the response. biological radiation from space outside low Earth orbit in nearly 50 years. Human cells and yeast cells have many similar biological mechanisms, including DNA damage and repair, and BioSentinel’s experiments may help us better understand the risks of radiation for long-term human exploration. in deep space.
Progress continues to complete the Artemis I mission stacking and verify integrated hardware operations. The team recently successfully completed two complex tests: the Umbilical retraction and relaxation test and the Integrated modal test. Next, the Artemis I Orion stage adapter with secondary payloads will be moved to the Vehicle Assembly Center at Kennedy Space Center in Florida and added to complete the rocket stacking. Then the Orion spacecraft will be stacked on top of the rocket to complete the Artemis I spacecraft. Artemis I is the first in a series of increasingly complex missions to send astronauts to the Moon for long exploration. term that paves the way for human missions to Mars.
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