- NASA plans to try again on Saturday, Sept. 3, to launch its massive next-generation moon rocket.
- The eagerly anticipated trip would launch NASA’s moon-to-Mars Artemis mission.
- Engineers believe the problem was caused by a malfunctioning sensor earlier.
Five days after two technical problems thwarted an initial effort to launch the spacecraft for the first time, NASA plans to try again on Saturday, Sept. 3, to launch its massive next-generation moon rocket, agency officials announced on Tuesday.
Weather reports, which indicated only a 40% chance of favorable weather on Saturday, and the US space agency, which admitted some unresolved technical concerns, cast doubt on the mission’s chances of success.
NASA officials said Monday’s experience was helpful in troubleshooting certain problems and that further challenges may be worked through in the middle of a second launch attempt at a media briefing held a day after the first countdown ended with the flight being scrubbed.
So, in a sense, the launch test was acting as a live dress rehearsal that would hopefully end with an actual, successful liftoff.
According to NASA officials, the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and its Orion astronaut capsule will remain on their launch pad for the time being in order to avoid having to roll the enormous spaceship back into its assembly facility for a more in-depth round of tests and repairs.
If all goes as planned, the SLS will launch on Saturday afternoon during a two-hour launch window that opens at 2:17 pm from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying the Orion on an unmanned, six-week test journey around the moon and back.
The eagerly anticipated trip would launch NASA’s moon-to-Mars Artemis mission, which would replace the Apollo lunar project of the 1960s and 1970s before US human spaceflight efforts switched to low-Earth orbit with the space shuttles and the International Space Station.
Data revealed that one of the rocket’s main-stage engines had not reached the proper pre-launch temperature necessary for ignition, ending NASA’s initial Artemis I launch attempt on Monday and necessitating a postponement.
Mission officials told reporters on Tuesday that they think the engine cooling problem was caused by a malfunctioning sensor in the rocket’s engine section.
Mission managers will start the engine cooling procedure around 30 minutes earlier in the launch countdown as a result of Saturday’s attempt, according to NASA’s Artemis launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson. But more data analysis by engineers is needed to provide a complete explanation for the defective sensor.
The SLS program manager for NASA stated, “The way the sensor is acting doesn’t square up with the physics of the situation.”
According to Honeycutt, the sensor was last tested and calibrated in the rocket factory months ago. Rolling the rocket back to its assembly facility to replace the sensor would cause a delay in the mission of several months.
Before NASA decides the SLS-Orion is trustworthy enough to transport astronauts, the mission Artemis I, the SLS-inaugural Orion’s flight, seeks to put the 5.75 million pound craft through its paces in a demanding demonstration flight.
Aiming to send astronauts back to the moon as early as 2025, Artemis is named for the goddess who, in Greek mythology, was Apollo’s twin sister. However, many analysts think that this target date will likely slip by a few years.
The two-man descent team of Apollo 17 in 1972, who had preceded 10 other astronauts during five prior missions beginning with Apollo 11 in 1969, was the last group of humans to set foot on the moon.
NASA experts estimate that it would likely take until at least the late 2030s to accomplish Artemis’s goal of establishing a long-term lunar outpost as a stepping stone to even more ambitious human missions to Mars.
However, NASA still has a long way to go, starting with sending the SLS-Orion spacecraft into orbit.
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