NASA just Made This BIG Announcement after Artemis II Launch, Orion Better than Expected

We're a little more than 20 minutes from the time of ignition of that burn. We do know that the time of ignition has been updated from the pad. This is the predicted time of ignition and trajectory that was uploaded to the crew prior to liftoff. The current time of ignition is 1 hour 46 minutes and 9 seconds of mission elapsed time. The duration of the burn at the pad was 17 minutes 52 seconds ahead of the execution of the burn. Any changes in that duration will be reported to the crew and uploaded to ensure that the apogee rays burn goes as expected and puts them on the predicted trajectory. Trajectory being 43,730 miles by zero statute mile orbit. This high Earth orbit will take the crew of Integrity past the tracking and data relay satellites that are positioned about 23,000 miles away from the Earth. Again, they're currently on TDRS-West, and they will transition to the Deep Space Network. The apogee rays burn time of ignition again at 1 hour 46 minutes and 9 seconds of mission elapsed time. Houston, Integrity for CFC install. That is complete. Copy CFC, thank you. Teams on the ground are analyzing the time of ignition and what's called TGO, the duration of burn. At the time ahead of liftoff, the duration of the burn was 17 minutes 52 seconds. There might be some changes. The flight dynamics officer and his support in the back room. Integrity, Houston, with new ARB numbers for real this time. Okay, Stan, we're listening. Go ahead. Okay, Stan, we copy and have entered 1 hour 46 minutes 7 seconds for TIG and TGO 18 minutes 6 seconds. One booster ignition and liftoff. The crew of Artemis 2 now bound for the Moon. Humanity's next great voyage begins. Good roll pitch. Roger, roll pitch. Houston, now controlling the flight of Integrity on the Artemis. Integrity passes the ultimate TGO target milestone. Mission Control, Houston, launch system core stage. Integrity, three miles in altitude, traveling more than 1,200 miles per hour. NASA's Space Launch System rocket lifted off the pad with 8.8 million pounds of thrust, carrying the Orion spacecraft and the Artemis 2 crew out to Earth orbit and beginning America's grand return to the Moon. Now, about 51 minutes into the flight during a planned handover between satellites, the Orion spacecraft underwent a communications issue, leading to a temporary partial loss of comms. The uplink from Capcom to the crew was being heard by the crew, but we cannot hear the responses for a brief period of time. There were no issues with the vehicle itself. Comms with the crew have been restored. We're actively working the issue and will keep you informed. The Orion spacecraft has successfully separated from the core stage and its solar arrays have been deployed as planned. Soon, the crew will execute the Apogee Rays burn, placing the spacecraft into a stable high Earth orbit as we prepare for the translunar injection and the journey into cislunar space. NASA astronauts Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, Mission Specialist Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen are safe, they're secure, and they're in great spirits. NASA is back in the of sending astronauts to the moon. We arrived at this point through a sustained effort and national commitment and the work of thousands across the agency, our industry partners, and our international allies. I want to personally thank the ground crews, pad controllers, the entire workforce here at Kennedy Space Center. This mission belongs as much to you as it does to the crew. The crew is now in the capable hands of Mission Control Houston, the Johnson Space Center, where teams will guide Orion through each phase of the mission with the same discipline and precision that has brought us to this moment. We have certainly been here before, we know the challenges ahead, we have a lot of checkouts to get through before TLI, and when all goes well, everything is go, Artemis 2 will be moonbound. So with that, we will open this up to questions and we will start here in the room. If we have any takers, we'll start right up here. Congratulations to all of you on a successful launch so far. My name is Jim Siegel, I'm with Florida Media Now, and I'm curious about when the astronauts will have their first meal on this mission, and secondly, is somebody on the Earth here, back in Houston or somewhere, keeping track of what they eat during this entire mission, and how do they go about doing that? Do they tell them what to eat, or do they kind of select what they want? What do you think? As far as the food being tracked, yes, we have a food lab and we have folks at the Johnson Space Center tracking what they eat, the nutrition, the calories. It makes a difference. They do this on Artemis, they do it on space station as well, so we're well-versed in that. We want to make sure that they're healthy, and we also want to make sure we know what they're doing, what they're eating, so we can also track that and make sure that they don't need any supplements or anything additional. Thanks guys, and congrats on a clean launch so far. Jared, or whoever wants to answer, how were you able to resolve the communications issue, and do you have any guesses as to what might have caused that, and was there any part of the mission so far that appeared off-nominal, or is everything looking good? Just curious to hear how things are going on that. Thanks. Well, on the comms issue, and there may be someone here that has a little more detail than I do of having to run around quite a bit, but I think they're still looking into trying to really understand exactly what was going on there, but it's restored, which is important. I think it just... It was during Andover, Cedars West. Sometimes that's squirrely ground configuration, you gotta get that right, so hopefully that's what it is, but we'll chase it down, but they were able to recover. They had intermittent forward and return links, so the burns that they needed on board was never an issue. We just... It was unusual for it to be dropped out for a couple minutes, so that's what we're telling you. We had a controller issue with the toilet when they spun it up, so we gotta work through that. That's gonna take maybe a few hours to troubleshoot. Crossover valve that connects the two gangs of tanks, it's supposed to be open to ensure maximum flow. It was closed during ascent when you shake the thing. Things like that happen, so they're gonna reset the valve, and then they had a recurrence of the... On Artemis 1, we had a latching current limiter failure on a piece of electronics, a transient failure when it gets exposed to radiation. They took one hit of those. We took about 24, 25 of those during Artemis 1. Again, normal, the onboard fault detection clean setup, but that's... We're just getting started, Joey. There's a flight test, and a lot of what we're doing here is exactly this, trying to test out all of the things that require the crew interaction, right? And so there's a... We anticipate to have a lot of these. Well, that's what we're here for, work through them. Do you have something on the baskets I can talk about the turnaround? The baskets are... Yeah, they're supposed to get out of the way. That's part of the plan. So I can tell you, on the mobile launcher, our team has already been looking at a lot of the imagery that we have that was taken, both during and after, and assessing that, trying to get the condition. We've got teams, I believe, going out there. They might already be out on their way to take a real look. Some of the good things that we've seen relative to Artemis 1, one of the issues we had was that the water that was supposed to be spraying down the launch pad, so there were some issues there that didn't happen. We saw a lot of corrosion. The water was working, so things were getting washed down. We're still also going to remove some of the parts so that we can do some of that cleaning to make sure we don't have those corrosion issues. We haven't seen evidence of things like after Artemis 1, like the elevator doors were blown off. We haven't seen that. So we're optimistic, but we got to get out to the pad. We got to look. We did a lot of changes after Artemis 1, trying to harden the system so that we can turn it around faster. We do anticipate there will be some items that will need to be replaced. It's a pretty violent environment, but we're hopeful that that's minimized, and as soon as we have more information on that, we'll definitely let you guys know where we stand and how quickly we think we can get it turned around. I would say right now we're on for the proximity operations demo. Haven't heard anything that's keeping us from that, Norm? No. On track, ready to go. Victor Glover's going to be flying it. Reid's going to be working the procedure with him, and cross-checking, and Jeremy and Christina are going to be looking out the windows, also spotting, cross-checking, using cameras and imagery, and it should be beautiful. So we can't wait. I have not heard a report yet. I know we will get a report. Again, when MECO happened, immediately they were getting prepped to do their perigee raise maneuver. That's critical. Otherwise, they come back to Earth, which we don't want them to. So they got that. They are working to get their spacesuits off. They just got the ARB burn, which was very important. So now they're working to get their suits off. So they are very busy. Now, later today, I anticipate they will call down and give us a full brief as to, you know, how the Proxox demo went, how the ride uphill went, and I personally can't wait to hear the comparison between this massive rocket and the shuttle. To me, success is under safely after a 10-day mission duration, so no early off ramps there. I think we're, you know, right now we're already getting good ECLSS data. We've never flown Orion with crew on board, so that's pretty important. I mean, understanding the Orion spacecraft is, you know, it's paramount in this one to progress on to integrated operations of Orion with a lander. Every day we're getting data. It says it was mentioned from the get-go. This is a test mission, for sure. No crew have ever ridden this before, and we'll keep gathering data over the next 10 days. We'll share updates, but we'll call success when they're in the water safely, and we'll start working on the next mission. I mean, I can certainly say we've completed the perigee raise maneuver. That was done pretty quickly, as you heard, and the apogee raise burn should have already happened. That should have been happening while we sat here. They were getting ready as we were walking in, and then if you want to talk maybe about the rest. So, we go into a high Earth orbit, roughly. The perigee is about a thousand nautical miles, give or take, of the Earth, 25,000. So, it's pretty elliptical. That's getting us, everything we do is getting us set up for the translunar injection burn, and so it's getting these burns. It's all converging down to what we call TLI, so we got to get the ECLSS system checked out. We got to make sure we have a redundancy. We got to make sure these burns go off where they should go off, and get Orion and the SM Configurator exactly where it needs to be, so when it comes around, and it's time for the translunar injection burn, off we go, and that takes us, really, that puts us outbound to the moon. That's a real big commit point, and so you'll be hearing more about that tomorrow. Not to mention, it not only sends us outbound to the moon, but it also sets up for the gravity assist that brings us back, so we are set all the way once we make that burn. One of the big objectives is getting the organization, and getting our qualification standards, and getting our certification rigor up to the standard for crewed flight. That's a big, you know, even though the mission is a complicated mission, moving the entire organization to a mindset of thinking about risk in the right way to fly crew is a big deal, and making sure that the way we've gotten the machine configured to fly crew with the resilience and reliability we care about is also a big deal. Jeff, out of suspicions, during the countdown, we heard controllers working through a few issues, one with the flight termination system, one with the launch abort system battery, and it sounded like there was a brief telemetry dropout. I wonder if you could provide a little bit more details about those issues, and how you resolved them relatively quickly. Yeah, so Jeff, the FTS issue was, we were doing an end-to-end test. We typically have to confirm that we can get a signal from the range to the machine, and then back. We weren't getting, we weren't able to close that entire end-to-end loop, but the guys at the range, they were really quick on their feet. They swapped to a different range receiver, which is a slightly different heritage, but has the same fundamental algorithms on it, and they were able to switch over to that, and able to confirm a good end-to-end signal, which is really clever. We had thought about getting a receive-only box that we had in the VAB, and shipping that over to Patrick quickly so they could do it, but they were able to fix it on the fly over there, so that was good. And once we knew we could confirm the end-to-end loop of that command, then we didn't need that receive, we don't need to do that test more than once, just we just need to verify the commands get on board. And so once we confirmed that that command was there, then we met all of our public safety risks. What are the teams looking for before TLI? We're looking to make sure that the life support systems work, that the vehicle's healthy, the life support systems have been checked out, they're ready to go. We assure that those are functional, because once we commit to TLI, they have to function. And so we want to make sure, so that's why we spend a day checking out the systems. Ascent is, you know, you shake, rattle, and roll a little bit, the vehicle. You saw that today, and you can imagine what that does to the systems. The systems, though, are performing very well. We anticipate that they continue to, but we want to get some track record on them before we do that. We also want to make sure we have redundancy in the system for comm, for environmental life support, propulsion, those type things, before we embark on that TLI mission. So that's what the mission control team in Houston will be doing tomorrow. Jeff Radigan and his team as the lead flight director will be well into that. The teams are well versed on it. They have trained for it. They work very closely in conjunction with the engineering team, the mission evaluation room in Houston, where the engineers that have the intricate knowledge of Orion come together with the operations team, and together they work with the crew to make sure that the vehicle, you know, is doing what we want to and accomplishing the mission objectives that we need to. But it always comes down to crew safety, vehicle safety, and mission objectives in that order. I understand that the CubeSats are going to be deployed like five hours into the flight. Is there any chance we're going to see live images of the deployment? And then when is the crew, I know they're super busy right now, but when are they going to start using the flywheel machine on its way to the Moon when everything is more like? The second question was to do when they start doing the manual as far as the flywheel machine. Sorry, thank you, the exercise machine. Yeah, I'll hand that to you, but I can answer the CubeSats. So the CubeSats are installed in the Orion stage adapter, which is actually a part of the upper stage piece, right? So once Orion separates from the upper stage, we'll do the Proxops demonstration, right? And then once Orion has cleared and we're away, then they will be deployed. So Orion won't be there to take images of them. And once they are deployed, each of them have their own plans for being able to communicate back down to Earth to various ground stations. They have their own communication plan. So we'll start to get information back from those individual CubeSats. So that's kind of the plan and the path forward on the CubeSat deployment and what you can expect. And I just want to follow up on that, if that's where that would be happening in the mission timeline and if there would be any video chance of that happening, or is that just going to be on the astronaut's photography at the time? So you may have to answer the question on whether or not there'll be the availability of what kind of real-time, I'm not sure what we'll have there, but the crew will get to observe the eclipse. This is pretty unique. It's kind of interesting. It actually doesn't happen when they're out of comms, so they will be having communication during that eclipse time. But during the eclipse, the Moon will be blocking the Sun. They will be able to see the Sun's corona, which is kind of cool. So they've been having a lot of science lessons over the last couple of days to learn about that and the eventuality that we actually launched today. So they're prepared to make those solar observations. It'll be a pretty cool and unique opportunity. So no matter, I guess, how you slice it, it's the opening act for sure. I think there are areas where we're clearly combining Apollo 7, Apollo 8 into a single mission, which we should be able to do. There has been, to your question earlier, there's been substantial progress over the last half century. We have tools. We've certainly been there before, so I would expect us to be able to get some mission efficiencies. But I would say that what we learn from this for sure will inform how we think about Artemis 3. Now there's certainly big picture objectives in that. We'd like to get the lander together. We'd like to test that out in Earth orbit before we go to the Moon with it. But if there are things that we don't see, maybe it is comm-related issues, then we're going to try and fix those. And then we're going to want to validate that on the next mission as well. And that should be the idea as we progress forward. I suspect when Artemis 3 comes around, we're going to learn a lot about the integrated operations that we'll want to validate and ensure is rolled into the subsequent missions. But yes, this should be a philosophy that we take across all of the grand efforts that we are pursuing right now to not necessarily jump to the ultimate desired state, but to build up to it. Related to Apollo 8 in a way, really, I just wonder what plans have gone into a new Earthrise image. A lot has gone into the aspirational nature of this mission. Have you a plan? I assume you have a plan. What is the plan? I do know that the teams have been looking at what the opportunities might look like. They've looked at the different launch dates. And so I know that they're really going to try to make that happen. I can't give you a confirmation on that yet, but stay tuned. Well, it's certainly an incredibly important step. I mean, this is the first, you know, crewed mission into this environment in more than a half century on a rocket that has never flown human beings before, along with a spacecraft. So it's incredibly important because we're going to learn an awful lot from this to inform subsequent missions. So yes, this is the beginning. You know, I can tell you, having had an opportunity to speak with the Artemis 2 crew after, actually after the State of the Union address, we talked a lot about what we wound up sharing with the world at the ignition event about adding additional missions, accelerating production, building out a moon base. I think it was very energizing for the crew because they knew that they were, you know, this is a risky mission for sure. Any type of new test flight mission going in this environment is going to be challenging. And they knew it was building up to something bigger. And I think that, I think it was very helpful for them in that regard. So, and certainly it was very helpful for me to hear their feedback as well. I would suspect a point or two wound up in the mission event. I'm curious what you anticipate could be some of the biggest challenges over the next few days, whether that's from a spacecraft or system standpoint or crew workload. I'll jump in. Flight day one from a crew workload is pretty tough. Between now and TLI, we're working the crew really hard. In fact, when they go to sleep tonight, they're woken up in the middle of their sleep to do the perigee raise burn. And so their sleep's disrupted. They're, you know, they're hitting on all cylinders. They may not be feeling well on top of that. So we know that flight day one and flight day two up to TLI is really good. We know it drops off then. And so going into this, we trained for that. We did simulations for this. We put the crew in exactly that state. Now they weren't in on orbit. They probably were feeling great, but we got a good gauge. Hey, are we working them too hard? And the mission control team is great because they're watching the crew constantly. They're watching their performance. And we also have a crew that's very good at saying, hey, enough's enough. And so together, we will make certain that we're doing everything in the best interest of meeting the mission objectives, making sure that we're not working the crew so hard that, you know, they make mistakes or something of that nature. And again, we work as a collective team going forward. So the question is that the commander talked about one of the alternate missions where they maybe would stay in Earth orbit for three or four or five days. Yes. One of the scenarios that would have led to that is if for some reason during the launch that the SLS did not quite deliver us to where we needed to be or the upper stage didn't deliver us to the orbit that we needed to be in. That would have been one of the scenarios. I think that's probably the main scenario that would have ended up in that one of those kind of alternate missions. Yeah. But I don't think we're going to need to worry about that, hopefully. But the other thing is if for some reason we're able to stay, but we're not able to do the TLI burn, we would stay in Earth orbit. So there's a couple of scenarios where that could happen. Can you just talk a little bit about the propellant loading this morning? Was it flawless? Were there any leaks detected? Was it a repeat of the wet dress rehearsal? Did you learn anything? Yeah, go ahead. I think it went extremely well. What I heard this morning, and Amit may have an update from later, but some of the leaks that we'd seen of the hydrogen during the tanking for the hydrogen, we saw leaks below 1%, which was significantly lower. Again, the seals that we replaced seemed to perform extremely well. We did a pressure test kind of partway through and the leak went up to about 1.4%, still well, well, well within the constraints, which 16% is the bound that we have. So I think it performed extremely well. We actually, I think, finished the tanking early from what I understood. So I think it went extremely well. So again, the seals that we had replaced out at the pad after wet dress number one, I think that was very, proved to be very successful. And with that, thank you all for coming out and covering Humanity's return to the Moon. Stay tuned for updates on NASA's social channels, including our continuous coverage on YouTube and NASA+. Go Artemis!