NASA canceled the launch of its Artemis 1 rocket after a leak developed – the second time it didn’t move forward.
The engineers advised the launch director that the planned takeoff should not go ahead.
The rocket, that was it originally slated for launch earlier this week On Monday 29, it was cleaned up following a hydrogen leak.
On Saturday, NASA said, “During the tanking of the Artemis I mission, a leak developed on the power side of the eight-inch quick disconnect while attempting to transfer fuel to the rocket.
“Attempts to solve it so far have not been successful.”
The latest attempt to launch the 32-story high Space Launch System rocket and its Orion capsule was blown away after
repeated attempts by technicians to correct a leak of supercooled liquid hydrogen propellant being pumped into the
fuel tanks of the central stage of the vehicle.
In addition to struggling to make up for the loss itself, the difficulty left mission handlers behind in the countdown, leaving too little time to complete pre-launch preparations before takeoff.
There was no immediate word on a time frame to retry launching the mission, dubbed Artemis I. But NASA may schedule another attempt for Monday or Tuesday.
The Artemis program has plans to send humans back to the moon’s surface more than 50 years after the last Apollo mission – and NASA wants to establish a base there as it has an eventual manned mission to Mars as its goal.
NASA wants to send the crew capsule over the rocket around the moon, pushing it to the limit before the astronauts board the next flight.
If the five-week demo with test dummies is successful, astronauts could fly around the moon in 2024 and land on it in 2025. The last time people walked on the moon 50 years ago.
