A fuel leak that first surfaced during a dress rehearsal in the spring resurfaced early on Monday, interfering with NASA’s countdown to the launch of its new moon rocket.
Launch controllers stopped the tanking procedure because it was already running an hour behind schedule due to thunderstorms offshore. As the clock was running out on the countdown, they cautiously restarted the operation to make sure that the leak was hydrogen fuel and not a problem with the sensors.
The 322-foot (98-meter) rocket outperforms even the Saturn V, which sent people to the moon fifty years ago, in terms of power.
If this test trip is successful, it will be the first time in 50 years that a crew capsule is in lunar orbit.
The Orion spacecraft at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center was mounted atop a rocket without any humans inside. Instead, three test dummies were strapped in for the six-week lunar orbiting mission.
Despite having no passengers, thousands of spectators gathered along the shore to watch the Space Launch System or SLS, rocket take off. With her husband, Vice President Kamala Harris arrived in Orlando, but she had not yet made the hour-long trip to Cape Canaveral in time for the scheduled takeoff.
The earliest possible date for the subsequent launch attempt is Friday.
NASA’s April countdown test was hampered by hydrogen fuel leaks, which required several repairs. In June, the demo was performed again with greater success, but there were still some leaks. Managers warned that until they attempted to fill the rocket’s tanks with almost 1 million gallons of extremely cold fuel on Monday, they would not know for sure whether the fixes were successful.
A communication problem with the Orion capsule also needed to be resolved by launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson and her crew.
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An 11-minute hiccup in the communication channels between Launch Control and Orion late on Sunday forced engineers to scurry for an explanation. Even though it was resolved by Monday am, NASA needed to know what went wrong in order to proceed with the launch.
It has been years since NASA’s 21st-century moon exploration program, Artemis—named for Apollo’s legendary twin sister—took its inaugural voyage. Budget overruns totaling billions have been caused by numerous delays; this demo alone costs $4.1 billion. Astronauts would embark on the second voyage and fly around the moon and back as early as 2024, assuming the test goes well. By the end of 2025, a two-person lunar landing may take place. NASA is aiming for the south pole of the moon.
From 1969 through 1972, 12 astronauts participated in the Apollo program, landing on the moon for brief periods of time. With astronauts rotating in and out for weeks at a time during Artemis, NASA hopes to construct a lunar base. Mars would be the following stop, possibly in possibly in the late 2030s or early 2040s.
(With inputs from agencies)
