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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., Sept 2 (Reuters) – Ground crews at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center began a final full day of launch preparations on Friday on the eve of a second attempt to send the giant rocket to the Moon from new generation of NASA in its debut. test flight, five days after technical problems thwarted a first attempt.
Mission managers were still “going” for Saturday afternoon’s liftoff of the 32-story-tall Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and its Orion space capsule to kick off the Artemis Moon-to-Mars program of NASA, successor to the Apollo lunar missions. half a century ago, NASA officials said.
Tests Thursday night showed technicians appeared to have fixed a leaking fuel line that contributed to NASA’s decision to halt Monday’s initial launch operation, Jeremy Parsons told reporters Friday. deputy program director of the space center.
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Two other key problems with the rocket itself — a faulty engine temperature sensor and some cracks in the insulation foam — have been largely resolved, Artemis mission director Mike Sarafin.
Melody Lovin, launch weather officer for the US Space Force at Cape Canaveral, said forecasts call for a 70 percent chance of favorable conditions during Saturday’s two-hour launch window, which opens at 2: 5 pm EDT (1817 GMT) as well as for the backup start time on Monday.
“The weather is still looking pretty good for Saturday’s launch attempt,” Lovin said. “I don’t expect the weather to be a show by any means for any of the release windows.”
Even so, he added, the odds of a pitch being scrubbed on any given day due to weather or any other reason were about one in three.
The mission, called Artemis I, marks the maiden voyage of both the SLS rocket and the Orion capsule, built under NASA contracts with Boeing Co ( BA.N ) and Lockheed Martin Corp ( LMT.N ), respectively.
NASA’s next-generation moon rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS) with the Orion crew capsule on top sits at Launch Complex 39B as rain clouds move in before its rescheduled debut test launch for the Artemis 1 mission at Cape Canaveral. Florida, U.S. September 2, 2022. REUTERS/Joe Skipper
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The SLS is scheduled to launch Orion around the Moon and return on a 37-day uncrewed test flight designed to test both vehicles before flying astronauts on a follow-up mission scheduled for 2024.
If the first two Artemis missions are successful, NASA aims to land astronauts on the moon again, including the first woman to set foot on the lunar surface, as early as 2025, although many experts believe that period is likely time to warm up a few. years.
Twelve astronauts walked on the moon during six Apollo missions between 1969 and 1972, the only space flights that have yet placed humans on the lunar surface.
Apollo grew out of the Soviet-US space race of the Cold War era, while NASA’s renewed lunar focus is more science-driven and includes international collaborations with space agencies in Europe, Japan and Canada, and with commercial rocket companies like SpaceX.
Unlike Apollo, the last flights to the Moon aim to establish a sustainable, long-term base of operations on the lunar surface and in lunar orbit as a starting point for eventual human expeditions to Mars.
NASA’s first step is to hit the ground running with SLS, the largest new vertical launch system the US space agency has built since the Apollo-era Saturn V rocket.
If the Artemis I mission is postponed again for any reason, NASA could try again on Monday or Tuesday. After that, regulations limiting how long a rocket can stay in its launch tower would likely require the spacecraft to return to the assembly building before another liftoff attempt, Parsons said. Such a move would involve a delay greater than a few days or a week.
The SLS and Orion have been in development for more than a decade, with years of delays and ballooning costs that reached at least $37 billion last year. But the Artemis program has also generated tens of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in trade for the aerospace industry, according to NASA.
(This story corrects fuel line testing day to Thursday night in paragraph 3)
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Reporting by Joe Skipper in Cape Canaveral, Florida, and Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Additional reporting by Joey Roulette in Palm Beach. Fla., Edition by Rosalba O’Brien
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