Saturday is NASA’s next moon rocket launch attempt: For the time being, NASA will continue to work on getting ready for a second attempt to launch its new moon rocket on Saturday, according to NASA officials.
The solution developed by the mission management intend to get around a rocket engine issue discovered during the first launch attempt on Monday.
The core of NASA’s Artemis program, which seeks to take men back to the moon in the coming years, is the Space Launch System rocket. The contemporary counterpart of the Saturn V that NASA astronauts used to get to the moon during the Apollo program fifty years ago.
The Orion crew capsule, which astronauts will travel in on subsequent trips. And the rocket tested extensively on this mission, Artemis I, which will not carry any passengers. Orion will travel for many weeks, enter lunar orbit, and eventually return to Earth.
The launch will now occur on Saturday at 2:17 p.m. Eastern time within a two-hour launch window, although heavy weather may be passing over the Florida launchpad.
A glitch with a liquid hydrogen line that supposed to sufficiently freeze one of the rocket’s four core-stage engines caused the launch to aborted on Monday.
According to John Honeycutt, the program manager in charge of managing the construction of the Space Launch System rocket. The temperatures of three of the engines were reaching the objective of minus 420 degrees Fahrenheit. In comparison, the other one was roughly 40 degrees warmer. Without a cool down, the metal engine components might cracked by the supercold propellants’ temperature shock.
Honeycutt noted that the warmer measurement may have been the fault of a misbehaving sensor. He said that experts looked at more data to confirm that the engines were all cool.
Mission management will convene on Thursday to determine whether to proceed with a launch attempt on Saturday.
NASA will have to bring the rocket back to the Vehicle Assembly Building if it cannot launch early next week. Twenty-five days after installation, the flight termination system must retested. Which consists of explosives that may kill the rocket if it deviates from its intended path.
