Today, I read a great article on NASASpaceflight.com about how NASA and Boeing are trying to optimize the space at the Michoud Assembly Facility (MAF) in Louisiana to begin building more than two Space Launch System (SLS) core stage boosters per year. As of right now, a pair of SLS boosters are being manufactured at MAF...the core stages for Artemis 2 (which is set to launch in 2023) and Artemis 3 (which would send astronauts to the Moon for a lunar landing mission as early as 2024). NASA's goal is to maximize the space inside MAF's buildings to make room for at least three core stage boosters—which would obviously increase the construction and launch cadence for SLS rockets embarking on Artemis missions.
So what does this have to do with the Interstellar Probe, you ask? Well, NASA obtaining the ability to fabricate more than one SLS booster at a time (like it was able to do with the space shuttle's external fuel tank before this program ended a decade ago) would allow the agency to not only have core stages available for Artemis flights, but for uncrewed, non-Artemis missions as well. The lack of this ability has led to the U.S. Congress ending the mandate that the SLS launch a very important interplanetary mission—the Europa Clipper—as originally envisioned. With the Interstellar Probe, the mission planners are literally banking on the so-called Big Orange Rocket to send their spacecraft to the outer edge of our solar system next decade.
The SLS presumably has the capability to give the Interstellar Probe the necessary speed to travel at least 8 to 9 Astronomical Units (a single Astronomical Unit, or AU, equates to 93 million miles—or the distance from the Earth to the Sun) a year...which would allow the spacecraft to reach the edge of the Sun's heliosphere at 120+ AU within 15 years. SpaceX fans reading this will probably point out that the Starship/Super Heavy vehicle can probably hurl the Interstellar Probe to much greater velocities than the SLS. However, according to this article, the mission planners don't want the spacecraft to travel too fast nor too slow—as the Interstellar Probe needs to be able to accurately gather data on the solar wind during its eventual voyage into the cosmos. So assuming that its Artemis 1 test flight goes well at the end of this year (or most likely in early 2022), the SLS has a very important payload on its long-term manifest if 1.) construction space is adequately maximized within the buildings at the Michoud Assembly Facility to manufacture SLS boosters at a rapid pace, and 2.) the Interstellar Probe is greenlit by NASA within the next few years! Happy Monday.
NASA and Boeing aim to optimize the areas at the Michoud Assembly Facility (MAF) to ramp up production of multiple SLS Core Stages and Exploration Upper Stages (EUS) for the Block 1B vehicle - set to become the SLS workhorse.
— Chris B - NSF (@NASASpaceflight) May 24, 2021
Philip Sloss overviews:https://t.co/8PCRvHAFK7
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