NASA delays launch of historic moon mission
(CNN) — NASA is now targeting March for the earliest possible launch of its historic Artemis II lunar moon mission, which will send four astronauts into deep space for the first time since the Apollo program ended more than five decades ago.
The decision came in the early hours of Tuesday after NASA said it had completed a wet dress rehearsal, a crucial test of the towering rocket system that will launch the astronauts on an unprecedented path around the moon. The mission had been expected to lift off as soon as February 8.
NASA said it encountered several problems during the test after cold weather caused a late start, including running into issues with hydrogen leaks while filling up Artemis II’s Space Launch System rocket with propellant. The delay would allow teams to review data and conduct a second launch rehearsal, the agency said in a blog post.
“With more than three years between SLS launches, we fully anticipated encountering challenges,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman added in a tweet.
“That is precisely why we conduct a wet dress rehearsal. These tests are designed to surface issues before flight and set up launch day with the highest probability of success,” he added.
During a news conference on Tuesday, NASA leaders said it was not yet clear whether the Space Launch System would need to be rolled back to a nearby building for servicing, though launch controllers noted there is quite a bit of work they can do while the rocket is sitting on the pad.
If the mission does not launch March, however, a rollback would be necessary to replace some batteries on the upper portion of the rocket, agency officials said at the news conference.
When cleared to fly, Artemis II will send a group of four astronauts — NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch as well as the Canadian Space Agency’s Jeremy Hansen — on a 10-day journey beyond the far side of the moon. The mission could set a new record for the farthest distance humans have ever traveled from Earth.
The astronauts will now be released from quarantine, which they entered in Houston on January 21, and not travel to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida Tuesday as tentatively planned.
NASA said the crew will enter quarantine again about two weeks from the next targeted launch date. The agency had previously said that March 6, March 7, March 8, March 9 and March 11 were available dates for launch.
Wiseman, the Artemis II commander, got frequent updates throughout the wet dress rehearsal Monday, according to NASA officials.
“We’ve been staying in constant communication so they know where we are and that we’re all together on this as we are moving forward with our plans,” said Lori Glaze, acting associate administrator for NASA’s Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, on Tuesday.
“With March as the potential launch window, teams will fully review data from the test, mitigate each issue, and return to testing ahead of setting an official target launch date,” NASA said in its blog post.
A 700,000-gallon test
A wet dress rehearsal is hands-on test during which launch controllers filled up the Space Launch System, or SLS rocket, with more than 700,000 gallons of super-chilled propellants and simulated the countdown to liftoff.
“This was first opportunity for us to get the integrated stack for Artemis II on the launchpad with all the systems working together,” said John Honeycutt, chair of the Artemis II Mission Management Team, at the news conference on Tuesday. “To me, the big takeaway was we got a chance for the rocket to talk to us, and it did just that.”
NASA ran into the hydrogen leak issues just a few hours into Monday’s test run — echoing a problem that also plagued the SLS rocket during its first round of dress rehearsals in 2022 ahead of the uncrewed Artemis I test flight. Kept at minus 423 degrees Fahrenheit, the liquified hydrogen, which is the primary fuel that powers the SLS, is notoriously fickle because of its tiny molecular structure that makes the substance difficult to contain.
NASA took an aggressive approach with testing after Artemis I to understand the leak issue, Honeycutt said.
“On the ground, we’re pretty limited as to as to as to how much realism we can put into the test. We try to test like we fly, but this interface is a very complex interface. This one caught us off guard,” Honeycutt said of the leak.
After troubleshooting the leaks, NASA was able to get the SLS rocket into “replenish mode” — during which the rocket is only loaded with enough fuel to top off the tanks as small amounts of the propellants boil off.
But another issue arose shortly after: A “closeout crew” — which is a group of jumpsuit-clad workers who visit the launchpad to close the hatch on the astronauts’ spacecraft — encountered an issue with a valve that was “inadvertently vented.” Their work continued longer than expected, pushing the simulated launch time NASA was working toward into the early hours of Tuesday morning. The space agency had been targeting a pretend four-hour liftoff window that opened at 9 p.m. ET Monday.
As the launch window came to a close, NASA said launch controllers were “counting down to approximately 5 minutes left in the countdown, before the ground launch sequencer automatically stopped the countdown due to a spike in the liquid hydrogen leak rate,” according to a news release from the space agency.
The next wet dress rehearsal will target the remaining objectives that occur after the 5-minute countdown mark that were not achieved during Monday’s test, said Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, launch director of NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems.
NASA has cautioned that, although it expected prelaunch preparations to run more smoothly for this mission than for the 2022 Artemis I flight, engineers still have the option of rolling the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft back off the launchpad and into the nearby Vehicle Assembly Building for additional work if needed. It’s not yet clear whether NASA will need to take such a step after Monday’s dress rehearsal.
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