Artemis Ascends: NASA Launch Propels Humanity to New Horizons!

Here’s a sanitized version of the provided YouTube transcript:

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[Music] Fifty years ago, America’s last Apollo astronauts left the moon. [Music] In the five decades since Apollo 17, we have built space stations, space shuttles, and space telescopes, and sent probes further than the edge of our solar system. [Music] All this time, we humans have remained locked inside low Earth orbit. But today, with the most powerful rocket NASA has ever built, we are on the cusp of sending humans back out of low Earth orbit and onto the lunar surface once again. This is an inside look at the groundbreaking Artemis program: the rockets, the spacecraft, and the people blazing a new trail to the moon, Mars, and beyond.

The first step [Music] is the launch. Between Apollo and Artemis, there are many similarities, mostly based on physics, especially when looking at the capsules and the large rockets. However, program-wise, there is a significant difference. We are not just going for flags and footprints; the Artemis program is expanding upon what we did in the Apollo era. We want to go to the lunar surface, build an outpost, and live on the moon to understand what it will take to go to Mars. It’s a much more deliberate approach to lunar exploration than Apollo was.

In the next decade, NASA envisions the beginnings of a long-term settlement on the moon, where a rotating cast of astronauts will live in a modular base camp, mining water and other resources from the moon itself, all while performing the kind of science that will help us in our quest to colonize Mars. The success of Artemis I is foundational for the future of space exploration. This planet-hopping journey into the future begins in 2022 with the scheduled launch of Artemis I, the first test flight of NASA’s newest and most ambitious rocket yet, the Space Launch System (SLS).

It all starts here, with the transportation system topped with the Orion crew capsule. This transportation system stretches 322 feet from top to bottom and weighs nearly 6 million pounds. The rocket is so massive that NASA had to re-engineer its legendary launch pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center just to accommodate it. 39B was there during Apollo and was the launch site for more than 50 space shuttle missions, but it didn’t have the right specifications for Artemis.

The launch pad is more than just a concrete platform; it is part of a larger Exploration Ground System (EGS) where the rocket is assembled, transported, and ultimately launched from. Each of these elements needed a major physical and technological overhaul, beginning with the Vehicle Assembly Building. When the vehicle is being stacked, platforms surround it so technicians can perform all the necessary testing and assembly. There are now 10 levels of platforms fabricated and installed just to process the Artemis rocket.

Once assembled, the rocket will be coupled to its launcher and transported 4.2 miles to the launch pad atop a newly restored and fortified crawler transporter. The crawler transporter was created back in the Apollo program. The new SLS vehicle weighs significantly more than the Apollo vehicle and the shuttle. Once the rocket reaches the launch pad, it will be surrounded by three recently installed 600-foot tall lightning towers, a technological shield against extreme weather that neither the Apollo missions nor the space shuttles ever had.

Below the rocket, a redesigned flame trench serves as the front line of defense against the SLS’s massive burst of energy. Its walls have been covered with 100,000 heat-resistant bricks, and in the middle of this 57-foot wide, 43-foot tall trench is the flame deflector, a newly constructed tower of engineered steel plates positioned precisely at a 58-degree angle. Its job is to protect the rocket by deflecting heat and pressure away from the launch pad. If we didn’t have a flame deflector, the forces of the flame would go down and come back to the rocket, potentially damaging it.

Heat and pressure aren’t the only forces that could threaten the rocket; the flame trench also dampens the 176-decibel blast of sound coming from the engines. A 450,000-gallon water tank will begin emptying into the flame trench at a rate of about one million gallons per minute seconds before liftoff. [Music]

It takes a lot of imagination to build this kind of technology. For the Artemis mission, using Apollo’s Saturn rockets was never an option. One of the biggest differences between Apollo and Artemis is that we are trying to reach the south pole of the moon. Apollo conducted fantastic science, but it was all in the equatorial regions of the near side of the moon. Getting to the south pole requires more fuel, more power, and a mission plan that has never been attempted before.

At the south pole of the moon, there are permanently shadowed craters because the sun is very oblique, creating areas that never see sunlight, where we might find water ice and volatile chemicals. Artemis I’s unmanned 26-day mission will chart a path for future Artemis astronauts, but the effort it takes to get off the Earth in those first few minutes of flight is the reason the SLS is so massive and complex. [Music]

The SLS rocket is an integrated system of multiple elements coming together. We have two solid rocket boosters and a core stage, which is a liquid engine stage, followed by an upper stage. When everything is lit, we pull the hold-down bolts off, and it launches off the pad. The two boosters provide over six million pounds of thrust for the first two minutes, after which they separate from the core stage, which continues for another six minutes, providing over two million pounds of thrust to reach low Earth orbit. From there, the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage takes over and delivers Orion into lunar orbit.

The engines that will propel Orion toward the moon aren’t the only ones built into the rocket; there are also multiple rocket motors in the launch abort system designed to pull the crew capsule to safety in case of an emergency. [Music]

The Orion spacecraft itself has one main engine and eight auxiliary engines. Since this rocket has never flown before, each of these elements had to go through a rigorous testing procedure prior to assembly. One of the first tests was to confirm that the core stage’s 500,000-gallon liquid hydrogen tank could withstand the pressure changes it might experience during a mission. Hundreds of load cells were applied to the hydrogen tank to test its limits.

As launch day approaches, NASA tests the engines that will play key roles in getting Artemis to the moon. They fire up Orion’s launch abort and attitude control motors built into the tip of the rocket [Applause] and Orion’s main engine and eight auxiliary engines. Then, it’s the solid rocket boosters’ turn. [Music] Each of these engines passes its hot fire test, and finally, the core stage is anchored into a test stand and ignited. The core stage is the backbone of the SLS rocket; without it, we wouldn’t be able to launch this mission to the lunar surface.

Inside the 212-foot tall core stage are the brains of the SLS: its flight computers and avionics systems. At the base of the core stage are its four RS-25 engines. Six barges worth of cryogenic propellants are loaded into the core stage’s liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen tanks. The countdown begins, water gushes into the flame trench on cue, and the burn is supposed to last 485 seconds. However, just over a minute in, a major component failure occurs, and the engines are shut down. [Applause]

The flight software performed as expected, shutting down the engines because it detected a limit violation. The engineers worked on the problem and returned to the test stand just two months later. In this test, the engine successfully burned through more than 700,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen as planned. The core stage was ready for the launch pad, and the team was ecstatic. It was a very exciting day. [Music]

After years of development and testing, the different components of Artemis I are brought together at last at the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. [Music] When assembling the spacecraft and the rocket, it must be done very deliberately because in flight, there are extreme loads and vibrations. It is crucial to ensure there are no loose connections that could come apart during the violent shaking.

Assembling the rocket takes months. The power of some nine million pounds of thrust will be felt on every bolt, every electrical connection, and every fuel line in the rocket. That surge of energy will be carried all the way to the top of the SLS in the new Orion space capsule atop Artemis I. Orion follows a trail blazed by the Apollo space capsule. The similarities between the two only go so far; while Apollo could hold three astronauts for 13 days, Orion can hold four astronauts for up to 21 days. It is 1.5 times larger than Apollo and, unlike its predecessor, which only flew men under six feet tall, Orion is designed for a diverse astronaut core of men and women.

Apollo used a very small pool of candidates, both physically and numerically. For Orion, we designed it from a fifth percentile female to a 95th percentile male, allowing us to expand our astronaut pool for future exploration. On Artemis I, engineers will closely monitor Orion’s crew, but this flight will not have humans on board. Instead, there will be a few humanoid features, including a fully outfitted crash test dummy nicknamed “Moonikin,” along with two phantom torsos named Helga and Zohar to evaluate an experimental vest designed to protect astronauts from elevated radiation levels in space.

There are over 1,200 sensors outfitted on Orion to record temperatures, vibrations, and loads, as well as radiation sensors inside the cabin to measure what the crew will experience in the future. [Music] With the rocket now standing tall in the Vehicle Assembly Building, the day it will be transported to the launch pad and ignited draws closer. That day may change the course of human exploration for decades to come and has already changed the lives of the thousands of people who have worked on it to date.

It’s a beautiful rocket, and I think many people will look up at the sky, amazed by its height. Finally seeing Orion on top of the rocket is a moment of validation for all the hard work put in by thousands of people over the years. [Music] It will be a great day when we see that first Artemis launch, and everyone across the country should feel immense pride, not only for that day but also for what the future holds for America. This is America’s rocket. [Music]

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This version removes any potentially sensitive or unnecessary details while maintaining the essence of the original transcript.