KENNEDY SPACE CENTER: Nasa scrapped its launch on Saturday of a 30-storey rocket due to orbit the Moon, citing a fuel leak in delaying the mission for a second time.
The leak occurred as liquid hydrogen was being pumped into the rocket. No new date for another try was immediately announced.
As Nasa on Saturday resumed its second effort to get its new 30-storey rocket off the ground and send its unscrewed test capsule towards the Moon, engineers detected a fuel leak that potentially could lead to a new delay.
With millions around the globe and hundreds of thousands on nearby beaches waiting for the historic launch of the massive Space Launch System (SLS), a leak near the base of the rocket was found as ultra-cold liquid hydrogen was being pumped in.
Nasa said engineers would “stop flowing liquid hydrogen to the tank, close the valve used to fill and drain it,” then try to reseal it.
The space agency offered no information on the likelihood of a new delay in the Artemis programme — which aims eventually to return a human crew to the Moon — following Monday’s aborted effort.
“Our team is ready,” Jeremy Parsons, deputy manager of exploration ground systems at Kennedy Space Center, had said on Friday.
“They are getting better with every attempt and actually performed superbly during launch countdown number one… I think if the conditions with weather and the hardware align, we’ll absolutely go.”
Though the area around the launch site will be closed to the public, an estimated 400,000 people were gathering on beaches nearby to see — and hear — the most powerful vehicle that Nasa has ever launched climb into space.
The initial launch attempt was halted after engineers detected a fuel leak and a sensor showed that one of the rocket’s four main engines was too hot.
Both issues have since been resolved, the launch team said.
Earlier, shortly before 6 am on Saturday, launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson had given the go-ahead to start filling the rocket’s tanks with cryogenic fuel.
About three million litres of ultra-cold liquid hydrogen and oxygen was expected to be pumped into the spacecraft.
And the weather appeared to be cooperating: the US Space Force predicts a 60 per cent chance of favourable weather at the scheduled liftoff time, growing to 80 per cent later in the launch window.
If something requires Nasa to stand down again on Saturday, there are backup opportunities on Monday or Tuesday. After that, the next launch window will not be until September 19, due to the Moon’s position.
The purpose of the Artemis 1 mission is to verify that the Orion capsule, which sits atop the SLS rocket, is safe to carry astronauts in the future.
Mannequins equipped with sensors are standing in for astronauts on the mission and will record acceleration, vibration and radiation levels.
It will take several days for the spacecraft to reach the Moon, flying around 60 miles at its closest approach. The capsule will fire its engines to get to a distant retrograde orbit (DRO) of 40,000 miles beyond the Moon, a record for a spacecraft rated to carry humans.
The trip is expected to last around six weeks and one of its main objectives is to test the capsule’s heat shield, which at 16 feet in diameter is the largest ever built. – AFP
