The giant Artemis 1 rocket – consisting of the Orion capsule sitting atop the 30-story Space Launch System (SLS) – will return 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 turned out to watch the uncrewed Artemis 1 launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Saturday. But as the sun rose over Launch Pad 39B — where the rocket was being loaded with its supercooled liquid hydrogen fuel — an alarm sounded, alerting engineers to a gap in a seal in one of the rocket’s engines that was leaking fuel. Engineers tried and failed to plug the leak three times, NASA said, but soon realized there was no quick fix. After the launch was aborted, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said the rocket’s next launch window would open in early October, but because other missions would take priority over Artemis 1, the third launch attempt would likely take place in the middle of the month. The rocket is set to launch the first of two test trips that will pave the way for a manned moon landing as early as 2025, marking humanity’s first trip back to the moon since 1972 and signaling NASA’s intention to create a long-term presence there. “We go 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 stress it and test it, test that heat shield and make sure it’s right before we put four people on top of it.” Both Artemis 1 launch attempts have been cleared due to technical problems. The first attempt was aborted because engineers were unable to cool one of the rocket’s four RS-25 core stage engines to a safe temperature in time for launch. NASA said it had fixed the problem, which the agency said 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 cause of the cancellation of the second attempt, a hydrogen fuel leak from one of the rocket’s core engines, was much more serious and required a reset to fix. The Artemis 1 mission, which will send the Orion capsule up to 40,000 miles past 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 human 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 in the first release will not affect the rest of the program’s schedule, Nelson said. Technical difficulties for NASA’s rocket began months before the planned launch. During the wet dress rehearsal in April, a faulty helium valve and a liquid hydrogen leak prevented the rocket from preparing to the ignition point, Live Science previously reported. This led NASA, wary of additional delays, to launch the rocket without a full pre-launch test of the rocket’s assembled engines. However, delays came. The setback will increase NASA’s control over the price of the Artemis program. Since launching in 2017, Artemis has already cost more than $40 billion to develop and is projected to total $93 billion by the end of 2025, according to NASA Inspector General Paul Martin’s Office of the Interior controller of the space service. “Given our estimate of US$4.1 billion per launch of 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. March 1 testimony before the House Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics. “Otherwise, relying on such an expensive, single-use heavy-lift rocket system will, in our judgment, hinder, if not derail, NASA’s ability to sustain the long-term human goals of exploring the Moon and Mars.” Artemis mission manager Mike Sarafin told reporters that NASA engineers were taking special care of the rocket’s launch because of its critical role in future space missions. “This is 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 this initial test flight, we are learning the vehicle. We are learning how to operate the VEHICLE.” NASA has said the Artemis program is worth the high cost because it will spur technological innovation and be a critical next step in humanity’s exploration of the universe. “This time we’re not just going to touch down [on the moon] and leave after a few hours or a few days – we will come back to learn, to live, to work, to explore, to determine if there is water. therefore at [moon’s] south pole that would mean we’ve got rocket fuel, we’ve got 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 getting to Mars.” Assuming NASA irons out the technical kinks, 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 kicked off with two new big-name storms – Danielle and Earl. If more are to come, the weather will add a new dimension of unpredictability to the October flight. Related content: This article was originally published by Live Science. Read the original article here.
