NASA announced that today’s first launch attempt of the mega-moon rocket has been delayed due to technical issues. NASA communication officer Derrol Nail shared the reason for this delay with the statement “engine leak could not be fixed”. NASA has another launch opportunity on Sept. 2, but Nail didn’t give a clear indication of whether a launch would be attempted on that date.
Today was the big day for the 322-foot-long Space Launch System rocket and Orion capsule; however, the expected did not happen and the launch did not occur. The mission, also called Artemis I, aims to launch NASA’s ambitious Artemis program to return humans to the moon by the middle of the decade. Artemis I is an uncrewed test mission to collect performance data of the Orion spacecraft before transporting astronauts for the next mission, Artemis II.
The two-hour launch window was supposed to open at 08:33 ET, but at 08:35 NASA officially canceled the mission. The first issue that arose was something that looked like a crack in the rocket’s core stage thermal shielding material. But later this was identified as a crack in the foam and not in the actual tank. Engineers also detected a leak in the liquid hydrogen line to cool the four engines below the rocket’s core stage.
NASA officials said they are still preparing a troubleshooting plan and collecting data on the hydrogen leak issue.
If the problems with hydrogen sound familiar, it may be because NASA encountered a hydrogen leak problem during wetsuit rehearsal in June. Due to this problem, the engineers stopped the T-29 seconds countdown and could not continue the test.
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