At 8:30 a.m. local time on November 4, after about 9 hours of transshipment, the United States returned to the moon "hope of the whole village", SLS first arrow returned to the 39B launch station again, and it is expected that it will try to launch again at 0:07 a.m. EST on November 14 to send the unmanned "Orion" spacecraft into lunar orbit. And this time, it is the last chance for SLS, because after the first three "rollbacks" and fuel drainage, the physical structure of this rocket is close to the limit, and the next thing is to buy and sell a hammer, either forcibly launched, or announced retirement, and went to the park to make sculptures.
The SLS starter is rolling out of the VAB again
The take-off time of the SLS first arrow was scheduled to be December 2016 at the earliest, but until today, it has not been launched, 6 years later than the original plan, according to conservative statistics, at least 12 "pigeons", which is really not indebted to the three "ace pigeons" called together with the "Science" experimental module and the "Webb" space telescope. Sadly, those two "ace pigeons" have already gone to heaven, and SLS may really be "in heaven".
Whether it succeeds or not is a one-shot sale
In fact, there is another "ace pigeon" in the space industry, which is Japan's new generation of H-3 rocket, which was originally launched at the end of 2020, and after several delays, on November 7, the first aircraft was launched again from the Tanegashima Space Center. However, this time, it is not going to be launched like SLS, but to carry out a first-stage forced ignition test.
The Japanese H3 rocket was also on the launch pad
The LE-9 engine equipped with the H-3 stage is the world's first 100-ton rocket power system using open expansion cycle technology scheme, and the data is very high, with a sea level thrust of 125 tons and a vacuum of 150 tons. But before the first flight, during a test in May 2020, it was found that the wall of the LE-9's combustion chamber was cracked and cracks appeared on the turbine, which was one of the most outrageous accidents in the history of human spaceflight. Subsequently, the Japanese side adjusted the design of the rocket turbine, and the newly designed engine was tested again in the summer of the same year, but it was still unsuccessful.
LE-9 engine of the H3 rocket
The Japanese side also announced a more detailed accident investigation of the LE-9 engine, confirming that there was a fatigue fracture surface in the open area of the combustion chamber wall and the FTP blades of the turbopump, which was analyzed and believed to be caused by resonance, which may be that the vibration of the engine and the resonance frequency matching of the rocket structure are unreasonable, and the turbine needs to be redesigned to exclude structural characteristic values that may resonate in all working ranges, this design, nearly 2 years have passed.
Turbines are one of the main sources of rocket vibration
In the following several tests in 2021, the problem of the LE-9 engine was not solved, and it was not until February 13 of this year that JAXA completed the last three-type combined combustion test of the rocket's first stage engine LE-9 at the Tashiro test site, which was said to burn for about 40 seconds with a full fuel chassis, and the total thrust of the three engines was 450 tons, which was 422 seconds specific to the thrust, but its actual performance was not as good as that of the H-2B rocket.
H3 rocket engine test
I almost thought it was going to take off
There is no exact time for when the H-3 rocket will be able to make its first flight, JAXA only announced that it may be launched in the fourth quarter of this year at the Tanegashima Space Center LC-Y2 station, and now there are less than 2 months left before 2022, and the first flight of the H-3 will most likely continue to be postponed.
The H3 rocket is unlikely to make its first flight this year
It is worth mentioning that in JAXA's planning, there are 3 H-3 rockets to be launched this year, the first arrow carries the geosynchronous communication satellite of DSN, the other H-3 carries a payload called TF-1, and even an H-3 rocket, which will carry Japan's new generation of cargo spacecraft HTV-X1 for test launch, HTV-X1 is aimed at lunar orbit, which is a pilot project of the lunar gateway space station under development in the United States. Of course, the H-3 rocket is only launching it into low-Earth orbit for testing this time, and the matter of lunar orbit will have to wait for the follow-up.
Japan's space ambitions are quite big
In this way, the SLS rocket of the United States returning to the moon pulls the crotch, Japan's new generation H-3 pulls even more, and the three rockets are launched within this year, which is absolutely impossible, and the best result may be to complete the first flight of H-3 at the end of the year, and as for the HTV-X1 lunar cargo spacecraft and TF-1 payload, it will have to wait until the year after tomorrow at the earliest. Speaking of which, Japan's space technology has "crushed" our existence, but now it is not as good as a year, it is really "thirty years east of the river, thirty years of the west of the river".
No boosters this time?