NASA on Saturday aborted a second attempt to land its new 30-story rocket and send the test capsule to the Moon without it after engineers detected a fuel leak.
Millions and hundreds of thousands on nearby beaches around the world were awaiting the historic launch of the massive Space Launch System (SLS), a leak was found near the base of the rocket as ultra-cold liquid hydrogen was being pumped out. was.
“The launch director waived today’s Artemis I launch,” NASA said in a statement. “Several troubleshooting attempts to address the area of the leak … did not fix the problem.”
Although the area around the launch site was closed to the public, an estimated 400,000 people gathered nearby to see and hear – the most powerful vehicle NASA has ever launched into space.
An initial launch attempt was also halted on Monday after engineers detected a fuel leak and a sensor showed that one of the rocket’s four main engines was overheating.
Early Saturday, launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson had proceeded to begin filling the rocket’s tanks with cryogenic fuel.
About three million liters of ultra-cold liquid hydrogen and oxygen were to be pumped into the spacecraft, but the process soon led to problems.
No new date was immediately announced for another attempt.
After the latest delay, there are opportunities for backup on Monday or Tuesday. After that, due to the position of the Moon, the next launch window will not take place until September 19.
The Artemis 1 mission aims to verify that the Orion capsule, which sits atop the SLS rocket, is safe to carry future astronauts.
Sensor-equipped effigies stand for astronauts on the mission and will record acceleration, vibration and radiation levels.
– twin sister of Apollo –
It will take several days for the spacecraft to reach the Moon, flying about 60 miles (100 kilometers) from its closest approach. The capsule will fire its engines to go into retrograde orbit (DRO) at a distance of 40,000 miles from the Moon, a record for a spacecraft rated to carry humans.
The trip is expected to last about six weeks and one of its main purposes is to test the capsule’s heat shield, which at 16 feet in diameter is the largest ever built.
Upon returning to Earth’s atmosphere, the heat shield would withstand speeds of up to 25,000 mph and temperatures of 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,760 degrees Celsius)—about half as hot as the Sun.
Artemis is named after the twin sister of the Greek god Apollo, after whom the first moon mission was named.
Unlike the Apollo missions, which sent only white men to the Moon between 1969 and 1972, the Artemis mission would see the first man of color and the first woman step foot on the lunar surface.
A government audit estimates that the cost of the Artemis program will rise to $93 billion by 2025, with each of its first four missions at $4.1 billion per launch.
The next mission, Artemis 2, will take astronauts to the Moon without landing on its surface.
The crew of Artemis 3 is to land on the Moon in 2025 at the earliest, with subsequent missions envisaging a permanent presence on the lunar space station and on the lunar surface.
According to NASA chief Bill Nelson, a crewed trip to the Red Planet aboard Orion could be attempted by the end of 2030, which would last for several years.
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