The launch of NASA’s Artemis “mega moon rocket” has been delayed for more than a month, possibly until mid-October, after a second launch attempt on Saturday (September 3) was canceled due to a leaking engine.
The giant Artemis 1 rocket – made up of the Orion capsule perched atop the 30-story Space Launch System (SLS) – will be moved back to the vehicle assembly building and the next launch window won’t open until at least early October , NASA announced.
A crowd of about 400,000 people gathered to see the unmanned Artemis 1 rocket launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Saturday.
But as the sun rose over Launch Pad 39B — where the rocket was being refueled with its supercooled liquid hydrogen fuel — an alarm sounded, alerting engineers to a gap in a seal on one of the rocket’s engines through which fuel was leaking.
Engineers tried and failed to plug the leak three times, NASA said, but soon realized there was no quick fix.
Related: Lightning Strikes Artemis I Mission Mega Lunar Launch Pad During Tests
After the launch was canceled, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said the next launch window for the rocket would open in early October, but because other missions would take priority over Artemis 1, the third launch attempt would likely fall in the middle of the month.
The rocket is preparing to launch the first of two test flights that will pave the way for a manned lunar landing as early as 2025, marking humanity’s first return trip to the moon since 1972 and signaling NASA’s intention to establish a long-term presence there .
“We leave when it’s ready,” Nelson said. “We’re not going to go until then, and especially now on a test flight, because we’re going to highlight that and test it, and test the heat shield, and make sure it’s right before we put four people on top of it.”
Both Artemis 1 launch attempts were cleared of technical problems.
The first attempt was canceled because engineers were unable to cool one of the four RS-25 engines on the rocket core to a safe temperature in time for liftoff.
NASA announced that it has fixed the problem, which the agency says was caused by a faulty sensor that incorrectly reported the temperature inside the engine as much higher and much further from flight readiness than it actually was.
The reason for the cancellation of the second attempt, a leak of hydrogen fuel from one of the rocket’s main stage engines, was much more serious and required a rollback to correct.
The Artemis 1 mission, which will send the Orion capsule up to 40,000 miles beyond the moon and back, is part of NASA’s larger Artemis program. Artemis 1 will be followed by the Artemis 2 and Artemis 3 missions in 2024 and 2025/2026 respectively.
Artemis 2 will make the same journey as Artemis 1, but with a crew of four, and Artemis 3 will send the first woman and the first person of color to land on the moon, at the lunar south pole.
The delay to the first launch will not affect the rest of the program’s schedule, Nelson said.
Technical difficulties for NASA’s moon rocket began months before the planned launch.
During a wet dress rehearsal in April, a faulty helium valve and a leak of liquid hydrogen prevented the rocket from being prepared to the point of ignition, Live Science previously reported.
This led NASA, wary of further delays, to launch the rocket without a full test before firing the assembled rocket engines. But the delays still came.
The failure would increase scrutiny of NASA over the rising cost of the Artemis program.
Since it began in 2017, Artemis development has already cost more than $40 billion and is expected to total $93 billion by the end of 2025, according to NASA’s Office of the Inspector General Paul Martin, the space agency’s internal auditor .
“Given our estimate of $4.1 billion to launch the SLS/Orion system for at least the first four Artemis missions, NASA must accelerate its efforts to identify ways to make its Artemis-related programs more affordable Martin said in March 1 testimony before the House Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics.
“Otherwise, reliance on such an expensive, single-use, heavy-lift rocket system will, in our view, impede, if not derail, NASA’s ability to support its long-term goals of human exploration of the Moon and Mars.”
The Artemis mission manager, Mike Sarafin, told reporters that NASA engineers are taking extreme care in launching the rocket because of its critical role in future space operations.
“It’s an incredibly difficult business,” Sarafin said. “This is an initial test flight of this vehicle. As said, we will fly when we are ready. And as part of that initial test flight, we study the vehicle. We’re learning how to operate the vehicle.”
NASA said the Artemis program is worth the high price because it will spur technological innovation and be a crucial next step in human space exploration.
“This time we won’t just land [on the moon] and we leave after a few hours or a few days – we go back to study, live, work, explore, determine if there is water; therefore of [moon’s] south pole, which would mean we have rocket fuel, we have a gas station up there,” Nelson told BBC Radio 4.
“This time we’re going to learn how to live in this hostile environment for long periods of time, all with the goal of going to Mars.”
Assuming NASA irons out the technical glitches, new headaches for the space agency could emerge in the form of weather problems in the Atlantic basin.
After a two-month hiatus, this year’s Atlantic hurricane season has begun with two new named storms, Daniel and Earl. If more come, the weather will add a new dimension of unpredictability to flying in October.
Related Content:
This article was originally published by Live Science. Read the original article here.
Add Comment