NASA on Monday cleared the first launch attempt of Artemis 1, the US space agency’s first moon rocket in 50 years, due to an “engine bleed” that stopped the countdown 40 minutes early of take off.
Engineers at NASA’s Launch Complex in Cape Canaveral, Fla., discovered the problem with one of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket’s four core engines during the nightly loading of 2.76 million liters (730,000 gallons) of liquid hydrogen and oxygen needed. to send the spacecraft on its 42-day, 1.3m-mile journey to the far side of the moon and back.
They were unable to find a solution in time to meet a two-hour launch window that opened at 8.33am (1.33pm BST) on Monday and are now fixing the problem to assess readiness for the next available opportunity on Friday, September 2.
However, mission directors were unsure of meeting the first safety date due to the severity of the problem, which arose when engineers increased pressure in the fuel lines to “condition” the engines with cryogenic propellant and raise its temperature for launch.
The engine “didn’t achieve the high-precision temperature that they were looking for,” said launch control communicator Derrol Nail, adding that the rocket would remain fueled on Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Pad 39B while engineers gathered data
“The rocket is currently in a stable configuration,” he said. “The team couldn’t overcome the engine bleed that wasn’t showing the right temperature and ultimately the launch director has called a rub for the day,” Nail continued. “The engineers are focused on gathering as much data as they can, so they haven’t gone to drain the rocket yet.”
A decision on a further launch attempt was expected on Monday.
The unmanned Artemis flight is a crucial test mission designed to evaluate the capabilities of the SLS rocket and the six-person Orion crew capsule ahead of humanity’s planned return to the Moon for the first time in half a century.
If Artemis 1 is successful, astronauts will be aboard an interim test flight along the same route 40,000 miles beyond the moon and back, a walk scheduled for 2024. The first moon landing since the Apollo 17 in December 1972 would occur a year later. with NASA declaring that it will bring the first woman to walk on the lunar surface.
More than a quarter of a million people gathered on Florida’s Space Coast on Monday to watch a moment in history now postponed until later this week, or even later in September or October, if the engineers cannot quickly diagnose and address the cause of engine bleeding.
Problems with the rocket, which is made by Boeing, first emerged during a “hot fire” test in January last year, when the engines shut down just one minute into a scheduled eight-minute run. The project at this stage was already almost three years behind schedule and $3 billion (£2.55 billion) over budget.
Critics say the ultimate cost to the US taxpayer of the Artemis programme, which is expected to reach $93 billion (£79 billion) by 2025, and which has long-term goals of placing the first humans in Mars in 15 or 20 years, it cannot be justified.
A NASA helicopter flies over the agency’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket with the Orion spacecraft on board in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Photograph: NASA/Getty Images
But NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, a former space shuttle astronaut, said there was now a greater purpose in placing new human footprints on the lunar soil than those of the 12 Apollo program men What more than six missions did in the past generation.
“We have to be on the moon for much longer periods of time than just landing like before, staying a few days and leaving,” Nelson said on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday. “This time we will go back, we will live there, we will learn there. We are going to develop new technologies, all this so that we can go to Mars with humans.
“This is all to develop where we can be living on other worlds. It could be floating worlds, it could be the surface of Mars. But that’s just part of our outward push, our quest to explore, to find out what’s out there in this universe.”
NASA’s space shuttle program, which was retired in 2011, limited manned missions to low Earth orbit, while private US space companies such as Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin have flew, or are planning flights, to the International Space Station orbiting 250 miles. above the Earth.
Artemis is NASA’s first deep space exploration project in decades and, unlike the previous Apollo and shuttle programs, relies heavily on outside contractors and international partners.
SLS is designed and manufactured by Boeing. The Orion crew capsule is a creation of Lockheed Martin. And the European Space Agency supplies the Service Module, the spacecraft’s power plant for its lunar journey once the SLS’s powerful solid rocket boosters and center stage have placed it beyond the ‘gravitational attraction of the Earth.
The ESM will push Orion farther from Earth than any human-qualified spacecraft has ever flown, providing electricity, water, oxygen and nitrogen and keeping the capsule underway and at the right temperature before it separates and burns up harmless to the atmosphere. return to Earth