After the troubled moon mission’s two previous technical delays, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has decided to launch Artemis 1 on September 27.
The delays on August 29 and September 3 were mostly caused by engine problems and a hydrogen fuel leak that occurred only hours before launch, respectively.
Although it has also indicated a launch window in early October, NASA is set to launch the mission that seems hopeless in late September.
Engineering teams would need to successfully complete a test to fuel the Space Launch System rocket and get a waiver to avoid having to retest the batteries on an emergency flight system that would be used to destroy the rocket if it deviated from its intended path before the date could be set.
The timeframe would be advanced by several weeks if the rocket had to be wheeled back to its assembly facility because it would not be granted the waiver.
On September 27, a “70-minute launch window opens at 11:37 am EDT,” and on November 5, the mission would come to a close with the Orion capsule splashing down in the ocean.
The probable following date is October 2.
Seven hours before to liftoff, NASA decided against continuing with its most recent launch attempt because engineers were unable to fix a hydrogen fuel leak.
Throughout the Artemis 1 countdown, NASA engineers made many attempts to stem the fuel leak.
To reset the hydrogen fast detach connection, they first tried warming the tank connector and then cooling it with cold fuel.
Engineers then attempted to pressurise it again with helium before switching back to the warm-and-chill approach to halt the leak. All three efforts fell short.
Engineers were unable to get one of the rocket’s engines cool enough for takeoff during the first launch attempt.
Jim Free, associate administrator for exploration systems development at NASA, told reporters last week that the spacecraft was now safer “on the ground” than it was “safe in orbit.”
We don’t enter these experiments lightly, he continued, and we don’t say we hope this will work.
We won’t launch until we are prepared, we promise.
The first phase of NASA’s ambition to send people back to the moon by 2025 has begun with the launch of the Artemis I mission.
In preparation for future lunar missions with people onboard, the Artemis 1 space mission aims to test the SLS and the unmanned Orion spacecraft.
After launch, it will take several days for the spacecraft to travel around 60 miles to make its closest approach to the Moon.
One of the major goals of the mission is to test the heat shield of the capsule, which is the biggest one ever constructed at 16 feet in diameter, when the spacecraft re-enters the atmosphere.
The third mission, scheduled for the middle of the 2020s, will put a woman and someone of colour on lunar soil while the next mission, Artemis 2, would send people to the Moon without actually landing on its surface.
In preparation for a voyage to Mars in the 2030s, NASA intends to construct a lunar space station named Gateway and maintain a permanent presence on the Moon to learn how to endure very lengthy space missions.