The post-flight analysis team of the Artemis I Space Launch System rocket is interpreting and reviewing data for their final report on the mission’s performance. Their findings will be used to refine plans for future Artemis missions to the moon and beyond, NASA said Friday.
Over four terabytes of pre-launch and launch information as well as nearly 31 TB of imagery data were gathered by SLS support engineers at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
A new RS-25 engine controller enabled the team to amass more than 100 measurements including temperatures, speeds, pressures and vibrations. They found that the engines’ thrust and mixture ratio control valves were within 5 percent of their value predictions, while internal pressures and temperatures were within 2 percent of pre-flight predicted values.
“The correlation between actual flight performance and predicted performance for Artemis I was excellent,” SLS program manager John Honeycutt said. “There is engineering and an art to successfully building and launching a rocket, and the analysis on the SLS rocket’s inaugural flight puts NASA and its partners in a good position to power missions for Artemis II and beyond.”
