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Live coverage of the first rollout of NASA’s Artemis Rocket / SLS
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By NASA
3 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Gateway’s HALO module at Northrop Grumman’s facility in Gilbert, Arizona, on April 4, 2025, shortly after its arrival from Thales Alenia Space in Turin, Italy. NASA/Josh Valcarcel NASA continues to mark progress on plans to work with commercial and international partners as part of the Gateway program. The primary structure of HALO (Habitation and Logistics Outpost) arrived at Northrop Grumman’s facility in Gilbert, Arizona, where it will undergo final outfitting and verification testing.
HALO will provide Artemis astronauts with space to live, work, and conduct scientific research. The habitation module will be equipped with essential systems including command and control, data handling, energy storage, power distribution, and thermal regulation.
Following HALO’s arrival on April 1 from Thales Alenia Space in Turin, Italy, where it was assembled, NASA and Northrop Grumman hosted an April 24 event to acknowledge the milestone, and the module’s significance to lunar exploration. The event opened with remarks by representatives from Northrop Grumman and NASA, including NASA’s Acting Associate Administrator for Exploration Systems Development Lori Glaze, Gateway Program Manager Jon Olansen, and NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik. Event attendees, including Senior Advisor to the NASA Administrator Todd Ericson, elected officials, and local industry and academic leaders, viewed HALO and virtual reality demonstrations during a tour of the facilities.
Dr. Lori Glaze, acting associate administrator for NASA’s Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, and Dr. Jon B. Olansen, Gateway Program manager, on stage during an April 24, 2025, event at Northrop Grumman’s facility in Gilbert, Arizona, commemorating HALO’s arrival in the United States. Northrop Grumman While the module is in Arizona, HALO engineers and technicians will install propellant lines for fluid transfer and electrical lines for power and data transfer. Radiators will be attached for the thermal control system, as well as racks to house life support hardware, power equipment, flight computers, and avionics systems. Several mechanisms will be mounted to enable docking of the Orion spacecraft, lunar landers, and visiting spacecraft.
Launching on top of HALO is the ESA (European Space Agency)-provided Lunar Link system which will enable communication between crewed and robotic systems on the Moon and to mission control on Earth. Once these systems are installed, the components will be tested as an integrated spacecraft and subjected to thermal vacuum, acoustics, vibration, and shock testing to ensure the spacecraft is ready to perform in the harsh conditions of deep space.
In tandem with HALO’s outfitting at Northrop Grumman, the Power and Propulsion Element – a powerful solar electric propulsion system – is being assembled at Maxar Space Systems in Palo Alto, California. Solar electric propulsion uses energy collected from solar panels converted to electricity to create xenon ions, then accelerates them to more than 50,000 miles per hour to create thrust that propels the spacecraft.
The element’s central cylinder, which resembles a large barrel, is being attached to the propulsion tanks, and avionics shelves are being installed. The first of three 12-kilowatt thrusters has been delivered to NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland for acceptance testing before delivery to Maxar and integration with the Power and Propulsion Element later this year.
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Last Updated Apr 25, 2025 ContactLaura RochonLocationJohnson Space Center Related Terms
Artemis Artemis 4 Earth's Moon Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate Gateway Space Station General Humans in Space Explore More
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By NASA
4 Min Read NASA Marshall Fires Up Hybrid Rocket Motor to Prep for Moon Landings
NASA’s Artemis campaign will use human landing systems, provided by SpaceX and Blue Origin, to safely transport crew to and from the surface of the Moon, in preparation for future crewed missions to Mars. As the landers touch down and lift off from the Moon, rocket exhaust plumes will affect the top layer of lunar “soil,” called regolith, on the Moon. When the lander’s engines ignite to decelerate prior to touchdown, they could create craters and instability in the area under the lander and send regolith particles flying at high speeds in various directions.
To better understand the physics behind the interaction of exhaust from the commercial human landing systems and the Moon’s surface, engineers and scientists at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, recently test-fired a 14-inch hybrid rocket motor more than 30 times. The 3D-printed hybrid rocket motor, developed at Utah State University in Logan, Utah, ignites both solid fuel and a stream of gaseous oxygen to create a powerful stream of rocket exhaust.
“Artemis builds on what we learned from the Apollo missions to the Moon. NASA still has more to learn more about how the regolith and surface will be affected when a spacecraft much larger than the Apollo lunar excursion module lands, whether it’s on the Moon for Artemis or Mars for future missions,” said Manish Mehta, Human Landing System Plume & Aero Environments discipline lead engineer. “Firing a hybrid rocket motor into a simulated lunar regolith field in a vacuum chamber hasn’t been achieved in decades. NASA will be able to take the data from the test and scale it up to correspond to flight conditions to help us better understand the physics, and anchor our data models, and ultimately make landing on the Moon safer for Artemis astronauts.”
Fast Facts
Over billions of years, asteroid and micrometeoroid impacts have ground up the surface of the Moon into fragments ranging from huge boulders to powder, called regolith. Regolith can be made of different minerals based on its location on the Moon. The varying mineral compositions mean regolith in certain locations could be denser and better able to support structures like landers. Of the 30 test fires performed in NASA Marshall’s Component Development Area, 28 were conducted under vacuum conditions and two were conducted under ambient pressure. The testing at Marshall ensures the motor will reliably ignite during plume-surface interaction testing in the 60-ft. vacuum sphere at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, later this year.
Once the testing at NASA Marshall is complete, the motor will be shipped to NASA Langley. Test teams at NASA Langley will fire the hybrid motor again but this time into simulated lunar regolith, called Black Point-1, in the 60-foot vacuum sphere. Firing the motor from various heights, engineers will measure the size and shape of craters the rocket exhaust creates as well as the speed and direction the simulated lunar regolith particles travel when the rocket motor exhaust hits them.
“We’re bringing back the capability to characterize the effects of rocket engines interacting with the lunar surface through ground testing in a large vacuum chamber — last done in this facility for the Apollo and Viking programs. The landers going to the Moon through Artemis are much larger and more powerful, so we need new data to understand the complex physics of landing and ascent,” said Ashley Korzun, principal investigator for the plume-surface interaction tests at NASA Langley. “We’ll use the hybrid motor in the second phase of testing to capture data with conditions closely simulating those from a real rocket engine. Our research will reduce risk to the crew, lander, payloads, and surface assets.”
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Credit: NASA Through the Artemis campaign, NASA will send astronauts to explore the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, and to build the foundation for the first crewed missions to Mars – for the benefit of all.
For more information about Artemis, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/artemis
News Media Contact
Corinne Beckinger
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
256.544.0034
corinne.m.beckinger@nasa.gov
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By NASA
NASA/JPL-Caltech A NASA spacesuit glove designed for use during spacewalks on the International Space Station is prepared for thermal vacuum testing inside a one-of-a-kind chamber called CITADEL (Cryogenic Ice Testing, Acquisition Development, and Excavation Laboratory) at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California on Nov. 1, 2023.
Part of a NASA spacesuit design called the Extravehicular Mobility Unit, the glove was tested at vacuum and minus 352 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 213 degrees Celsius) — temperatures as frigid as those Artemis III astronauts could experience on the Moon’s South Pole. A team from NASA JPL, NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, and the NASA Engineering and Safety Center have collaborated on testing gloves and boots in CITADEL. Elbow joints are slated for testing next. In addition to spotting vulnerabilities with existing NASA suit designs, the experiments will help the agency prepare criteria for test methods for the next-generation lunar suit — being built by Axiom Space — which NASA astronauts will wear during the Artemis III mission.
Read more about the testing needed for Artemis III.
Text credit: Melissa Pamer
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
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By European Space Agency
ESA's Biomass mission is on the launch pad at Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. Don’t miss the live coverage of liftoff on Tuesday 29 April, on ESA WebTV. Coverage will start at 10:55 CEST with commentary live from Kourou and ESA’s European Space Operations Centre in Germany. The Vega-C rocket carrying Biomass is scheduled for liftoff at 11:15.
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By NASA
2 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Syncom Space Services employees Kenneth Shipman, left, and Jesse Yarbrough perform final tubing install in early March to prepare the interstage simulator gas system on the Thad Cochran Test Stand at NASA’s Stennis Space Center for leak checks. Leak checks were performed prior to activation of the gas system this month. The activation marks a milestone in preparation for future Green Run testing of NASA’s exploration upper stage (EUS) in the B-2 position of the Thad Cochran Test Stand.NASA/Danny Nowlin Syncom Space Services employees Branson Cuevas, left, Kenneth Shipman, and Jesse Yarbrough install final tubing in early March before activation of the interstage simulator gas systems on the Thad Cochran Test Stand at NASA’s Stennis Space Center. The activation marks a milestone in preparation for future Green Run testing of NASA’s exploration upper stage (EUS) in the B-2 position of the stand.NASA/Danny Nowlin Crews at NASA’s Stennis Space Center recently completed activation of interstage gas systems needed for testing a new SLS (Space Launch System) rocket stage to fly on future Artemis missions to the Moon and beyond.
The activation marks a milestone in preparation for future Green Run testing of NASA’s exploration upper stage (EUS) in the B-2 position of the Thad Cochran Test Stand. For Green Run, teams will activate and test all systems to ensure the stage is ready to fly. Green Run will culminate with a hot fire of the stage’s four RL10 engines, just as during an actual mission.
The interstage simulator component will function like the SLS interstage section that protects the upper stage during Artemis launches. The interstage simulator will do the same during Green Run testing of the stage at NASA Stennis.
The interstage simulator gas system will provide helium, nitrogen, and hydrogen to the four RL10 engines for all wet dress and hot fire exercises and tests.
During the activation process, NASA Stennis crews simulated the engines and flowed gases to mirror various conditions and collect data on pressures and temperatures. NASA Stennis teams conducted 80 different flow cases, calculating such items as flow rates, system pressure drop, and fill/vent times. The calculated parameters then were compared to models and analytics to certify the gas system meets performance requirements.
NASA engineers Chad Tournillon, left, and Robert Smith verify the functionality of the control system in early March for activation of the interstage simulator gas systems on the Thad Cochran Test Stand at NASA’s Stennis Space Center. The activation marks a milestone in preparation for future Green Run testing of NASA’s exploration upper stage (EUS) in the B-2 position of the stand.NASA/Danny Nowlin Members of the engineering and operations team review data as it is collected in early March during activation of the interstage simulator gas systems on the Thad Cochran Test Stand at NASA’s Stennis Space Center. Pictured are NASA’s Mark Robinson, Robert Simmers, Jack Conley, and Nick Nugent. Activation of the gas systems marks a milestone in preparation for future Green Run testing of NASA’s exploration upper stage (EUS) in the B-2 position of the Thad Cochran Test Stand.NASA/Danny Nowlin NASA engineers Pablo Gomez, left, and B.T. Wigley collect data in early March during activation of the interstage simulator gas systems on the Thad Cochran Test Stand at NASA’s Stennis Space Center. The activation marks a milestone in preparation for future Green Run testing of NASA’s exploration upper stage (EUS) in the B-2 position of the NASA Stennis stand.NASA/Danny Nowlin Syncom Space Services employees Brandon Fleming, Robert Sheaffer, and Logan Upton review paperwork in early March prior to activation of the interstage simulator gas systems on the Thad Cochran Test Stand at NASA’s Stennis Space Center. The activation marks a milestone in preparation for future Green Run testing of NASA’s exploration upper stage (EUS) in the B-2 position of the stand.NASA/Danny Nowlin Syncom Space Services engineering tech Brandon Fleming tightens a pressure transducer on the Thad Cochran Test Stand at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in early March. Various transducers were used to provide data during subsequent activation of the interstage simulator gas systems at the stand. The activation marks a milestone in preparation for future Green Run testing of NASA’s exploration upper stage (EUS) in the B-2 position of the Thad Cochran Test Stand.NASA/Danny Nowlin Crews now will work to activate the umbilical gases and liquid oxygen systems. The NASA Stennis team will then conduct water system activation, where it will flow the flame deflector, aspirator, diffuser cooling circuits, purge rings and water-cooled fairing.
Afterward, the team will deploy the FireX system to check for total coverage, expected to be completed in the summer.
Before the exploration upper stage, built by Boeing at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, arrives at NASA Stennis, crews will perform a final 24-hour check, or stress test, across all test complex facilities to demonstrate readiness for the test series.
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