CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Fuel leaks have forced NASA to scrub the launch of its new moon rocket on a no-crew test flight.
The next launch attempt will not take place until Friday at the earliest.
The 322-foot Space Launch System rocket was set to lift off Monday morning with three test dummies aboard on its first flight, a mission to propel a capsule into orbit around the moon.
The shakedown flight, when it happens, will be a big step forward in America’s quest to put astronauts back on the moon for the first time since the end of the Apollo program 50 years ago.
NASA hopes to send four astronauts around the moon in 2024 and land humans there as early as 2025.
This is a breaking news update. A previous version of this report is below.
Fuel leaks and a possible crack discovered during final liftoff preparations threatened to delay the launch of NASA’s mighty new moon rocket Monday morning on its shakedown flight with three test dummies aboard.
As precious minutes ticked away, NASA repeatedly stopped and started the fueling of the Space Launch System rocket with nearly 1 million gallons of super-cold hydrogen and oxygen because of a leak. The fueling already was running nearly an hour late because of thunderstorms off Florida’s Kennedy Space Center.
The launch window opens at 8:33 a.m. ET and it will remain open for two hours.
The leak appeared in the same place that saw seepage during a dress rehearsal back in the spring.
Then a second apparent leak in a valve turned up, officials said.
Later in the morning, a crack or some other defect was spotted on the core stage – the big orange fuel tank with four main engines on it – with frost appearing around the suspect area, NASA officials said. Engineers began studying the buildup.
The rocket was set to lift off on a mission to put a crew capsule into orbit around the moon. The launch represents a major milestone in America’s quest to put astronauts back on the lunar surface for the first time since the Apollo program ended 50 years ago.
NASA’s assistant launch director, Jeremy Graeber, said after the repeated struggles with the first leak that the space agency would have to decide whether to go forward with the Monday morning launch.
“We have a lot of work to get to that point,” Graeber cautioned.
If Monday’s launch can’t go forward, the next attempt wouldn’t be until Friday at the earliest.
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The 322-foot (98-meter) rocket is the most powerful ever built by NASA, out-muscling even the Saturn V that took the Apollo astronauts to the moon.
No astronauts were inside the rocket’s Orion capsule. Instead, the test dummies, fitted with sensors to measure vibration, radiation and other conditions, were strapped for the six-week mission, scheduled to end with the capsule’s splashdown in the Pacific in October.
Even though no one was on board, thousands of people jammed the coast to see the rocket soar. Vice President Kamala Harris was expected among the VIPs.
The launch is the first flight in NASA’s 21st-century moon-exploration program, named Artemis after Apollo’s mythological twin sister.
Assuming the test goes well, astronauts will climb aboard for the second flight and fly around the moon and back as soon as 2024. A two-person lunar landing could follow by the end of 2025.
The problems seen Monday were reminiscent of NASA’s space shuttle era, when hydrogen fuel leaks disrupted countdowns and delayed a string of launches back in 1990.
Launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson and her team also had to deal with a communication problem involving the Orion capsule.
Engineers scrambled to understand an 11-minute delay in the communication lines between Launch Control and Orion that cropped up late Sunday. Although the problem had cleared by Monday morning, NASA needed to know why it occurred before committing to a launch.
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Here’s a rundown of the first flight of the Artemis program, named after Apollo’s mythological twin sister.
Rocket power
The new rocket is shorter and slimmer than the Saturn V rockets that hurled 24 Apollo astronauts to the moon a half-century ago. But it’s mightier, packing 8.8 million pounds (4 million kilograms) of thrust. It’s called the Space Launch System rocket, SLS for short, but a less clunky name is under discussion, according to Nelson. Unlike the streamlined Saturn V, the new rocket has a pair of strap-on boosters refashioned from NASA’s space shuttles. The boosters will peel away after two minutes, just like the shuttle boosters did, but won’t be fished from the Atlantic for reuse. The core stage will keep firing before separating and crashing into the Pacific in pieces. Two hours after liftoff, an upper stage will send the capsule, Orion, racing toward the moon.
Moonship
NASA’s high-tech, automated Orion capsule is named after the constellation, among the night sky’s brightest. At 11 feet (3 meters) tall, it’s roomier than Apollo’s capsule, seating four astronauts instead of three. For this test flight, a full-size dummy in an orange flight suit will occupy the commander’s seat, rigged with vibration and acceleration sensors. Two other mannequins made of material simulating human tissue – heads and female torsos, but no limbs – will measure cosmic radiation, one of the biggest risks of spaceflight. One torso is testing a protective vest from Israel. Unlike the rocket, Orion has launched before, making two laps around Earth in 2014. This time, the European Space Agency’s service module will be attached for propulsion and solar power via four wings.
Flight plan
Orion’s flight is supposed to last six weeks from its Florida liftoff to Pacific splashdown, twice as long as astronaut trips in order to tax the systems. It will take nearly a week to reach the moon, 240,000 miles away. After whipping closely around the moon, the capsule will enter a distant orbit with a far point of 38,000 miles. That will put Orion 280,000 miles from Earth, farther than Apollo. The big test comes at mission’s end, as Orion hits the atmosphere at 25,000 mph on its way to a splashdown in the Pacific. The heat shield uses the same material as the Apollo capsules to withstand reentry temperatures of 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit. But the advanced design anticipates the faster, hotter returns by future Mars crews.
Hitchhikers
Besides three test dummies, the flight has a slew of stowaways for deep space research. Ten shoebox-size satellites will pop off once Orion is hurtling toward the moon. The problem is these so-called CubeSats were installed in the rocket a year ago, and the batteries for half of them couldn’t be recharged as the launch kept getting delayed. NASA expects some to fail, given the low-cost, high-risk nature of these mini satellites. The radiation-measuring CubeSats should be OK. Also in the clear: a solar sail demo targeting an asteroid. In a back-to-the-future salute, Orion will carry a few slivers of moon rocks collected by Apollo 11’s Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in 1969, and a bolt from one of their rocket engines, salvaged from the sea a decade ago. Aldrin isn’t attending the launch, according to NASA, but three of his former colleagues will be there: Apollo 7’s Walter Cunningham, Apollo 10’s Tom Stafford and Apollo 17’s Harrison Schmitt, the next-to-last man to walk on the moon.
Apollo vs. Artemis
More than 50 years later, Apollo still stands as NASA’s greatest achievement. Using 1960s technology, NASA took just eight years to go from launching its first astronaut, Alan Shepard, and landing Armstrong and Aldrin on the moon. By contrast, Artemis already has dragged on for more than a decade, despite building on the short-lived moon exploration program Constellation. Twelve Apollo astronauts walked on the moon from 1969 through 1972, staying no longer than three days at a time. For Artemis, NASA will be drawing from a diverse astronaut pool currently numbering 42 and is extending the time crews will spend on the moon to at least a week. The goal is to create a long-term lunar presence that will grease the skids for sending people to Mars. NASA’s Nelson, promises to announce the first Artemis moon crews once Orion is back on Earth.
What’s next
There’s a lot more to be done before astronauts step on the moon again. A second test flight will send four astronauts around the moon and back, perhaps as early as 2024. A year or so later, NASA aims to send another four up, with two of them touching down at the lunar south pole. Orion doesn’t come with its own lunar lander like the Apollo spacecraft did, so NASA has hired Elon Musk’s SpaceX to provide its Starship spacecraft for the first Artemis moon landing. Two other private companies are developing moonwalking suits. The sci-fi-looking Starship would link up with Orion at the moon and take a pair of astronauts to the surface and back to the capsule for the ride home. So far, Starship has only soared six miles. Musk wants to launch Starship around Earth on SpaceX’s Super Heavy Booster before attempting a moon landing without a crew. One hitch: Starship will need a fill-up at an Earth-orbiting fuel depot, before heading to the moon.
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