The launch of the world’s most powerful rocket on its test flight to lunar orbit has been postponed after scientists discovered a hydrogen leak on board.
The Artemis 1 could now take off from Cape Canaveral on Friday, having missed its launch window today.
The launch was delayed during the refueling process, just 40 minutes before the scheduled takeoff, after a leak of liquid hydrogen was discovered.
Read More: What You Need to Know About NASA’s Mission to Return Humans to the Moon
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NASA chief: “Scrubs are only part of the program”
NASA said, Launch Director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson called an Artemis 1 launch attempt scrub.
“The problem that emerged was an engine bleed that could not be remedied, but the rocket is currently in a stable configuration.
“He was mostly tanked, but not fully tanked.
“Engineers are now working on a plan to continue collecting data on this particular engine and the bleeding that didn’t work.”
The Artemis project aims to bring people back to the moon, as a springboard for missions to Mars.
Its first mission, a 42-day unmanned flight around the moon, will test the huge rocket and the Orion spacecraft on which astronauts will travel.
People sat in Cocoa Beach waiting for the launch which never happened
While in space it will deploy 10 CubeSats – a type of miniaturized satellite – which will perform a series of works in deep space, from studying how radiation affects yeast DNA to hunting for water ice on the moon.
The 98-meter Space Launch System (SLS) is the most powerful rocket NASA has ever built and in this crucial test phase it will fly farther than any spacecraft built for humans: 40,000 miles beyond the far side of the moon. and 280,000 miles from Earth.
The megarocket’s 8.8 million pound thrust at launch is 13% more than the Space Shuttle and 15% more than the Saturn V rocket used in the Apollo missions.
Each of the two boosters generates more thrust than 14 four-engine commercial airliners, according to NASA, and fires for 126 seconds, providing more than 75 percent of the vehicle’s thrust before they break.
It is also powered by four RS-25 engines, with the outbound trip to the moon taking several days.
