NASA’s New Moon rocket sits on launch pad 39-B moments after the launch attempt was cleared at the Kennedy Space Center, Saturday, Sept. 3, 2022. Chris O’Meara/Associated Press
For the second time in five days, NASA on Saturday halted its countdown and postponed a planned attempt to launch the maiden test flight of its giant next-generation rocket, the first mission of the agency’s Mars Artemis program to the moon.
The final launch attempt of the 32-story-tall Space Launch System rocket and its Orion capsule was scrubbed after repeated attempts by technicians to fix a leak of supercooled liquid hydrogen fuel pumped into the vehicle’s main stage fuel tanks.
In addition to struggling to fix the leak itself, the difficulty caused mission managers to fall behind in the countdown, leaving too little time to complete pre-launch preparations before liftoff.
Preflight operations were canceled for the day about three hours before the target two-hour launch window was to open at 2:17 p.m. ET.
There was no immediate word on the timeframe for retrying to launch the mission, dubbed Artemis I. But NASA could schedule another attempt for Monday or Tuesday.
Monday’s initial launch attempt was thwarted by 11th-hour technical difficulties that emerged during the countdown, including a different ruptured fuel line, a faulty temperature sensor and some cracks in the insulating foam. NASA officials said those issues had previously been resolved to their satisfaction.
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