Moon Monday #242: Artemis II advances, and so does Long March 10 🔥
Plus mission updates.
NASA’s crewed Artemis II circumlunar mission targeting launch in early 2026 will see astronauts participate in multiple advanced health monitoring experiments. Given the scarcity of data on human health in deep space environments, the aim with the experiments is to collectively understand how the four astronauts are physiologically affected by their 10-day deep space transit and its radiation influx. The Orion capsule hosting the astronauts will carry even more radiation sensors than in Artemis I, with a notable upgrade coming from a partnership with the German Space Agency (DLR):
NASA has again partnered the German Space Agency DLR for an updated model of their M-42 sensor—an M-42 EXT—for Artemis II. The new version offers six times more resolution to distinguish between different types of energy, compared to the Artemis I version. This will allow it to accurately measure the radiation exposure from heavy ions which are thought to be particularly hazardous for radiation risk. Artemis II will carry four of the monitors, affixed at points around the cabin by the crew.
This collaboration builds on results from Artemis I whose radiation data was evaluated by NASA, ESA, and DLR scientists last year. They found that radiation exposure to future astronauts will vary not only based on time spent at locations within the capsule but also on Orion’s orientation in space. For example, the paper says when Orion’s orientation was altered during an engine burn, exposure levels dropped nearly in half due to the highly directional nature of the radiation in the Van Allen belt. These results are supporting understanding and preparedness for radiation exposure for Artemis II crew and beyond.
More Artemis II progress
On other fronts of Artemis II, NASA recently completed the new “Mission Evaluation Room” to complement flight control. Said team will consist of about 48 engineers from across NASA, ESA, Lockheed Martin, and Airbus with deep knowledge of Orion’s subsystems. They will analyze technical data as the mission unfolds, assisting flight control with optimizations as well as during any anomalies.
In August, the crew put on their spacesuits and headed to the launchpad to simulate a possible nighttime launch. They also practiced an emergency escape scenario should something go wrong in the launch complex. And in July, the crew entered the fuel-loaded Orion to practice activities and operations they’d have to perform before launch and during the transit to Luna. This excercise had high fidelity since the crew not only used the original capsule but also put on their spacesuits and tested Orion’s interfaces while the capsule operated on full power with its communications and life control systems turned on.
Next up, Orion will be integrated with its emergency escape system. In the lead up to the eventual second SLS rocket launch for Artemis II, NASA will conduct a series of 10 integrated tests over the remainder year.
While Artemis III lags..
In the meanwhile, Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy named Amit Kshatriya as the agency’s new Associate Administrator with the hope of accelerating the slow progress of the Artemis III crewed Moon landing mission. Kshatriya previously led NASA’s Moon to Mars Program Office for planning and implementing Artemis missions. The slow progress of SpaceX’s human lunar landing system for Artemis III, Lunar Starship, has implied that the US will likely not meet its self-imposed goal of “beating China” to the Moon, leading to continued chatter in the US Congress. The only exceptions to mere fear-mongering are seen in an op-ed by three former Artemis leaders and notably what former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine—under whom Artemis was conceived—spoke at a US Senate meeting on September 3. From Jeff Foust’s apt summary on The Space Review:
Bridenstine, in his opening remarks, criticized that need for in-space refueling of a propellant depot. “We’ll need to launch—nobody really knows, nobody knows—but it could be up to dozens of additional Starships to refuel the first Starship,” he said. “By the way, that whole in-space refueling thing has never been tested, either.” He added that, once that depot Starship fuels the lunar lander Starship, it’s unclear how long the lander version can then loiter in lunar orbit, waiting for the crew to arrive on an SLS-launched Orion.
The Acting NASA Administrator responded in anger:
That was shade thrown on all of NASA. I was angry about it. [...] I’ll be damned if that is the story that we write. [...] We are going to beat the Chinese to the Moon.
Given China’s bagging of a quicker succession of milestones in 2025 than expected, this story may not be for the Americans to write.
Related: We’re building future technologies for the Moon without closing missed milestones 🕳️
The article linked above takes the longer view of sustaining exploration of our Moon through robustness of approach and collaboration. No matter who lands humans on the Moon first in this century, it’s important that we take a global view if, after all, we really are going to Luna for “humanity” as is often proclaimed. As I noted in the article on Starship being slow to ship:
It’ll be great to have a second nation from Earth land humans on Luna. We should be happy that we now have two distinct efforts to sustain crewed and robotic exploration of our Moon. It gives humanity a better chance to do so since a dichotomic political system can apparently only do better under a competitive mindset and internal fear-mongering.
A Long March 10 booster roars thrice with Luna in sight
On September 12, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) and the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT) conducted multiple test fires for the upcoming Long March 10 series of crew-capable rockets using a high fidelity first stage structure. This follows the first test in August when they simultaneously fired the seven YF-100K high-thrust kerolox engines for 30 seconds to validate the design system, components, and materials which will power Long March 10A rockets. These will launch China’s next-generation human spacecraft named Mengzhou to Earth orbit for Tiangong space station visits. To launch humans to the Moon, China will combine three Long March 10A first stages to form the core stage of the Long March 10. This rocket—as China’s most capable—will loft a lunar Mengzhou Y capsule with humans and, in a separate launch, the Lanyue lander towards lunar orbit.
The second Long March 10A booster fire test involved simultaneous roaring of the engines for longer than the first time, engine gimbaling, restarting of four engines, and then of one. The latter two modes were to test engine performance for China’s plan to recover Long March 10A boosters post launch with reentry and landing burns. The cumulative firing time in the second test was 320 seconds, an order of magnitude more than the first. CMSA noted the importance of the milestone in its release:
The move marks a breakthrough in developing the initial prototype of the Long March-10 series of carrier rockets. [...] This test focused on evaluating the capabilities of the seven clustered engines of the rocket's first stage for low-thrust operating condition and secondary restart condition, obtaining complete test data.
To see all recent milestones hit by China in the lead up to its first crewed Moon landing aimed to be accomplished by 2030, read my review article linked below:
Many thanks to Catalyx Space, Gurbir Singh and Arun Raghavan for sponsoring this week’s Moon Monday! If you too appreciate my efforts to bring you this curated community resource on global lunar exploration for free, and without ads, kindly support my independent writing:
More mission updates
- In August, Thailand’s National Astronomical Research Institute (NARIT) delivered its ~5-kilogram MATCH payload to CAS and CNSA. The country’s first to the Moon, MATCH will fly aboard China’s upcoming Chang’e 7 orbiter. It will study solar storms and cosmic rays respectively with two instruments. CNSA aims to launch the Chang’e 7 lander-orbiter stack in late 2026. MATCH was developed by over a dozen Thai researchers in collaboration with seven professors across Chinese scientific institutions. Thailand was the first country to sign and participate in both the Sino-led ILRS Moonbase project and the US-led Artemis Accords [announcements one and two]. Senegal is the only other country to sign both. I hope many more join.
- Related: The case for India to study and exchange Chang’e lunar samples
- ispace Europe announced that is has passed the milestone of “Mission Design Review” (MDR) for the MAGPIE rover mission its leading to study lunar polar water ice and other such volatiles. The launch target is 2028. The mission team involving European universities won a ~€2.7 million ESA contract earlier this year to collaborate with the agency for achieving the scientific goals. ispace Europe says the MDR went free of any critical blockers, allowing the project to proceed to the next phase of funding and development which will involve maturing payload designs and building prototypes. Similar to the upcoming joint ISRO-JAXA LUPEX rover mission, MAGPIE will also feature a drill, a ground penetrating radar, and a neutron spectrometer to map and analyze lunar polar soil.
More Moon
- Riccardo Pozzobon, an instructor on ESA’s Pangaea analog lunar campaign to train future astronauts, unfortunately passed away in an accident during a recent excursion. 😔
- Blue Origin announced that it has passed Critical Design Review (CDR) for its Blue Alchemist project, which involves making solar cells using silicon and metals extracted from lunar soil simulants. This milestone is part of a broader goal set in 2023, when the company received $34.7 million from NASA as part of public-private Tipping Point contracts to build advanced lunar technologies. That broader goal is to demonstrate the autonomous operation of Blue Alchemist solar cells in a “simulated lunar environment” by 2026. The latest CDR milestone clears the way towards achieving that goal. While Blue Alchemist is an undeniably intriguing project, the sheer complexity and scale of producing infrastructure on the Moon to power habitats means that at least for a decade from now, NASA’s plans for getting power—solar and nuclear—for surface activities continues to be through the annoying tradition of pulling material out of Earth’s gruesome gravitational well. It should be noted though that Blue Alchemist also includes systems for extracting oxygen from lunar soil while getting metal byproducts so that’s valuable in itself.
