NASA’s rocket launch to the moon has been postponed again

NASA’s new mega-rocket launch to the moon was again canceled at the last moment on Saturday, for the second time in less than a week, further delaying the launch of Artemis, America’s flagship moon return program.

Liftoff was originally scheduled for 2:17 pm local time (6:17 pm GMT), with a two-hour launch window. But after more than three hours of trying to fix a fuel leak during rocket fueling operations, the launch teams ran out of time.

Launch Director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson made the final decision to abort from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, a NASA commentator said in a video broadcast.

The new attempt will probably take place on Monday or Tuesday, but NASA needs to analyze all the parameters before deciding on a new date. After Tuesday, there are no new launch opportunities before September 19 due to the position of the Earth and the Moon.

Fifty years after the last Apollo mission, this first test mission, without a crew on board, was the first phase of the Artemis program, whose mission was to establish a permanent human presence on the Moon, allowing it to be used later. Towards Mars.

The orange and white SLS rocket, which should have its first flight on Saturday, has been in development for more than a decade to become the world’s most powerful.

Just before 6 a.m. local time, the rocket’s tanks began to be filled with its cryogenic fuel — a total of three million liters of ultra-cold liquid hydrogen and oxygen.

But at 7:15 a.m., a leak was discovered at the bottom of the rocket, at the level of the pipe leading to the hydrogen tank. NASA tweeted that the flow stopped after three consecutive attempts by teams to fix the problem “failed.”

On Monday, in the first attempt, the launch was also canceled at the last moment due to technical problems, first a similar leak, which was overcome, then the cooling of the engines.

In the middle of a long weekend in the United States, up to 400,000 people are expected to worship the takeoff, especially from surrounding beaches.

Several astronauts, including Frenchman Thomas Pesquet, also made the trip.

The Orion capsule on top of the Artemis 1 rocket will make it possible to verify that it is safe to transport future astronauts.

Thanks to this new vessel, the American space agency hopes to reconnect with distant human exploration, the moon 1,000 times farther than the International Space Station.

The trip is expected to last for six weeks. Orion will venture up to 64,000 kilometers behind the Moon, farther than any other habitable spacecraft so far.

Artemis 1’s main purpose was to test the capsule’s heat shield, the largest ever built. On its return to Earth’s atmosphere, it would have to endure a speed of 40,000 km/h and a temperature half as hot as the Sun’s surface.

In total, the ship has to travel about 2.1 million kilometers until it lands in the Pacific Ocean.

According to the public audit, the complete success of the mission will be a relief for NASA, which launched the first launch for SLS in 2017 and will invest more than 90 billion dollars by the end of 2025. .

The name Artemis was chosen for the female form, the twin sister of the Greek god Apollo — echoing the Apollo program that sent only white men to the lunar surface between 1969 and 1972.

This time, NASA wants to allow the first woman of color and the first woman to walk on the moon.

The next mission, Artemis 2, will take astronauts to the Moon in 2024 without landing. The honor will be assigned to the Artemis 3 crew in 2025 at the earliest. NASA wants to launch one mission a year.

It becomes a question of building a space station in lunar orbit, a baptized gateway, and a base on the lunar surface.

There, NASA wants to test the technologies needed to send the first humans to Mars: new suits, a vehicle to get around, using lunar water…

According to NASA boss Bill Nelson, a round trip to the Red Planet via Orion, which could take several years, could be attempted in the late 2030s.