Artemis I: Test Flight Buys Down Risk for Humanity's Return to the Moon

The Artemis program successfully demonstrated its foundational deep space human transportation system during the Artemis I test flight in late 2022. This bold mission put the Artemis program on a course to accomplish increasingly complex missions to return humans to the Moon and to prepare for Mars and other destinations. The Artemis I uncrewed mission tested the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the Orion spacecraft using the ground processing, launch and recovery services provided by the Exploration Ground Systems (EGS) program at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC). The Artemis team accomplished key mission priorities that deliberately bought down risk for upcoming crewed missions as part of a build-up flight test strategy. The Artemis I mission priorities were 1) demonstrate Orion heatshield at lunar re-entry conditions; 2) operate systems in flight environment; and 3) retrieve the spacecraft. The successful performance and demonstration of these primary mission objectives from lift-off thru orbital insertion, translunar injection, outbound transit towards the Moon, entry into lunar orbit, coast in the lunar Distant Retrograde Orbit (DRO), exit from lunar orbit, transit back to Earth, atmospheric re-entry, descent, splashdown and recovery successfully showed that NASA has a foundational deep space transportation capability in place for human class missions. In addition to the primary mission objectives, a set of scientific payloads, approved Flight Test Objectives (FTOs) and Development Flight Test Objectives (DFTOs) were incorporated into the nominal mission plan and were designated as secondary, or priority 4, and were considered “bonus objectives” in terms of crewed flight risk buydown. During the mission, the team found itself in a position where it was comfortable achieving even more content than originally planned. As a result, DFTOs were added during the mission to further buy down risk to later crewed test flights. This paper presents an overview of the Artemis I test flight, including mission priorities and key test objectives, the launch campaign and as-flown mission profile, test objectives accomplished over the course of the 25.5- day mission, and implications to the crewed Artemis II and later test flight missions.