What will be the next date announced for Artemis 1?

[Proponent]

Officially, Artemis 1 is scheduled to fly in November.  While NASA Administrator Bridenstine has expressed doubt about that timing, he has said no new date will be set until the new Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations, Doug Loverro, has a chance to review the program.

For your reference, SLS's historical announced launch dates are plotted below, as tweeted by Eric Berger:

...

Please do post the rationale for your choice.

Because an announcement may be imminent, this poll will run for a maximum of just 10 days.  If an announcement is made, I will attempt to close the poll immediately.  You have one vote, which you may change.  Results are visible to you only after voting.

EDIT:  Corrected launch date, per helpful posts by eeergo and whitelancer64, below.

[eeergo]

Officially, Artemis 1 is scheduled to fly in June.  While NASA Administrator Bridenstine has expressed doubt about that timing, he has said no new date will be set until the new Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations, Doug Loverro, has a chance to review the program.

That Ars Technica link is from a year ago  Berger's plot is from 2018, and it was already quite confusing then - if the X axis is the real date, why is the blue line not perfectly linear (I assume some years were omitted, but without clarification it's really messy to understand)?

Anyway, if indeed the plot is trying to show projected date vs current date, the two lines should be much closer now, about half the distance they were separated by in 2018 (1.25 years now vs 2.25 years then), since the currently projected date accounting for margins is 2Q 2021. Officially it's been NET Nov 2020 for a while now, even if it's clear that date assumes a best case scenario with no margins.

[whitelancer64]

That article is nearly a year old!!!!

The current Artemis-1 targeted launch date is November 2020. NASA is still trying to work towards that date, though it is far more likely to launch early in 2021.

"John Honeycutt, NASA SLS program manager, says at the ASEB meeting that while a new associate administrator for human exploration and operations will set a formal launch date for Artemis 1, his team is still working “aggressively” towards a November 2020 launch date."
https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/1177317195921186816/

The actual launch date will primarily depend on how well the Green Run testing and launch pad dress rehearsals go this spring / summer.

[Eric Hedman]

I voted Q1 of next year for the next announced date.  I'm not convinced that's when it will actually launch.  If the green run goes fine, there are still issues to work out at KSC.  So I would not be surprised to see another announced date that is in Q2 or Q3 of next year.

[Proponent]

That article is nearly a year old!!!!

The current Artemis-1 targeted launch date is November 2020. NASA is still trying to work towards that date, though it is far more likely to launch early in 2021.

"John Honeycutt, NASA SLS program manager, says at the ASEB meeting that while a new associate administrator for human exploration and operations will set a formal launch date for Artemis 1, his team is still working “aggressively” towards a November 2020 launch date."
https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/1177317195921186816/

The actual launch date will primarily depend on how well the Green Run testing and launch pad dress rehearsals go this spring / summer.

Thank you very much, eeergo and whitelancer64.  I'd been thinking it was November, but then stumbled onto the out-of-date article without realizing my mistake.

I HAVE CHANGED THE POLL OPTIONS accordingly and have zeroed out all counts.  If you've already voted, PLEASE VOTE AGAIN.

I do apologize for my idiocy.

[Proponent]

Berger's plot is from 2018, and it was already quite confusing then - if the X axis is the real date, why is the blue line not perfectly linear (I assume some years were omitted, but without clarification it's really messy to understand)?

I think the x-axis is just the number of announced launch dates.

[Eric Hedman]

A Space News article from October 11th with comments from Ken Bowersox:

“We have a chance to actually have a rocket on the pad and launch by the end of next year,” he said. “But when you start throwing all those different uncertainties, it’s more likely that we will move out into 2021.”

Earlier in his speech, he suggested that the Artemis 1 launch could slip well into 2021. “Some time late next year, middle of the year after,” he said, “the first uncrewed Orion will be launched out around the moon.”

https://spacenews.com/nasa-official-hints-first-sls-launch-could-slip-to-mid-2021/

[meberbs]

An article on this site lists spring 2021 as realistic timeframe and points out that for a daylight launch window (likely required/desired for initial launch) the mission would have to push out to May. Based on this, I expect that by the time they revise the public estimate, the NET date will be late enough for the launch window considerations to simply push them to Q2 2021 which is my vote. I fully expect more delays past that though.

https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2019/12/sls-ksc-ground-systems-critical-year/

[jadebenn]

The NASA administrator himself recently said he expects a 2021 launch at this point.

[Proponent]

Boeing appears to be, in the words of the ever eloquent Howard Tindall, in deep trouble with a capital "S."  It's not just SLS, it's 737 MAX, Starliner, and now DARPA's XS-1, suggesting there is a deeply rooted problem with the company's culture.  I very much doubt repeated assurances that Boeing got the message and has straightened out SLS, just like that.  A ship the size of Boeing turns slowly.

I suspect a realistic launch date is sometime in 2022, but, even with the change of guard at NASA, an acknowledgment of that now would be just too painful.  Any announcement will have to put the date into 2021, so it might as well be the end of that year:  I'm going with Q4 2021, though I expect the eventual launch date to be later.

[Proponent]

Updated history, including Foust's tweet highlighted by whitelancer64.

EDIT:  Error spotted by meberbs corrected.  Revised plot to show projected launch date, which is equal to the announcement date plus the number of years to the announced launch date divided by the average rate of progress since late 2017.  The average rate of progress on any given announcement date is the amount by which the number of years to launch has decreased divided by the time elapsed.  The left-most announced launch date and announced years to launch are shown in faded color to reflect the fact that they are not included in the calculation of projected launch dates.

[meberbs]

Updated history, including Foust's tweet highlighted by whitelancer64.

You have your data off for at least the last point or 2. That Nov. 2020 plan was true as of late 2019 (2019.75 for that tweet, though I believe that had been the date for a while before that.) As of that point, There would have been just over a year left before launch, not 2 years (Looks to me like bad x data causing an incorrect calculation). You probably should check the other data points as well.

[Proponent]

You have your data off for at least the last point or 2. That Nov. 2020 plan was true as of late 2019 (2019.75 for that tweet, though I believe that had been the date for a while before that.) As of that point, There would have been just over a year left before launch, not 2 years (Looks to me like bad x data causing an incorrect calculation). You probably should check the other data points as well.

Thanks, meberbs.  I've shifted the most recent data point a year to the right, making the announcement date the date of Berger's tweet, September 2019.  If anyone could nail down an earlier "official" announcement of a November 2020 launch date, I would be grateful.

Earlier data are from the plot in Eric Berger's tweet of October 2018, shown in the OP.  I've reviewed those data and don't believe I've introduced any errors there.

[Proponent]

Though it's not directly relevant to the subject of this poll, I've added a "projected launch date" to the plot.  The first step in calculating this is to determine the average rate of progress from late 2017, when political wrangling over SLS ended, and the date of an announcement.  This is equal to the decrease in the amount of time to the announced launch date divided by the amount of time elapsed.  On average, this is about 0.6 years per year.  Then, divide the time from the announcement date to the announced launch date by the progress rate to get the projected years to launch.  Finally, add this last figure to the announcement date to get the projected launch date.  The projected launch date is more stable than the announced launch date, having receded just one year since 2014, during which time the announced launch date has receded two years.

I'm not over-thinking this, am I?

[Proponent]

Time's up!

The result is a fairly smooth distribution of predicted announced launch dates ranging from Q1 2021 to H2 2022, plus one prediction of "other," i.e., cancellation or no announcement.  The mode and median are both Q2 2022.

Over to Mr. Loverro to announce the winners!

[high road]

Seems my vote of Q1 was too optimistic. If even I am being too optimistic about SLS, that's saying something.

https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2020/02/sls-debut-april-2021-ksc-teams-launch-sims/

[Proponent]

Seems my vote of Q1 was too optimistic.

You were closer than I, with my guess of Q4 2021.  The good news is that the most popular answer, Q2 2021, was right on target.  Chalk one up for the wisdom of crowds!

[Proponent]

OOPS!  It looks like I was premature in regarding April 2021 as an announced launch date:  Space Policy Online quotes NASA Associate Administrator Steve Jurczyk as saying

When we get the core stage, hopefully in the late summer/early fallish time frame, from Stennis to Kennedy we’ll be flowing the vehicle thru KSC and integrating for launch hopefully in the mid-’21 time frame, mid-to-late ’21 time frame.

For purposes of this thread, I'm going to interpret that as 30 September 2021.  In any event, the collective wisdom of the crowd seems to have been a little bit on the optimistic side this time around.  This makes SLS's rate of progress since the previous launch-date announcement about -1.6 years/year (yes, that's a negative number).  Over all since late 2011, SLS has progressed toward the rolling announced launch date at a rate of about 0.55 years per year, with a median of 0.52.  I'll be surprised if it flies in 2021, and it's not difficult to project a 2023 maiden flight.