NASA's next-generation moon rocket stands on launch complex at Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S. August 30, 2022. © Steve Nerius, Reuters |
NASA aims to make a second attempt to launch its giant next-generation moon rocket on Saturday, Sept. 3, five days after a pair of technical issues foiled an initial try at getting the spacecraft off the ground for the first time, agency officials said on Tuesday.
But prospects for success on Saturday appeared clouded by
weather reports predicting just a 40% chance of favourable conditions that day,
while the U.S. space agency acknowledged some outstanding technical issues
remain to be solved.
At a media briefing a day after Monday's first countdown
ended with the flight scrubbed, NASA officials said Monday's experience was
useful in trouble-shooting some problems and that additional difficulties could
be worked through in the midst of a second launch try.
In that way, the launch exercise was serving essentially as
a real-time dress rehearsal that hopefully would conclude with an actual,
successful liftoff.
For now, NASA officials said, plans call for keeping the
32-story-tall Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and its Orion astronaut capsule
on its launch pad to avoid having to roll the massive spacecraft back into its
assembly building for a more extensive round of tests and repairs.
If all goes as hoped, the SLS will blast off from the
Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Saturday afternoon, during
a two-hour launch window that opens at 2:17 p.m., sending the Orion on an
uncrewed, six-week test flight around the moon and back.
The long-awaited voyage would kick off NASA's moon-to-Mars
Artemis program, the successor to the Apollo lunar project of the 1960s and
'70s, before U.S. human spaceflight efforts shifted to low-Earth orbit with
space shuttles and the International Space Station.
NASA's initial Artemis I launch attempt on Monday ended
after data showed that one of the rocket's main-stage engines failed to reach
the proper pre-launch temperature required for ignition, forcing a halt to the
countdown and a postponement.
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, mission managers said they
believe a faulty sensor in the rocket's engine section was the culprit for the
engine cooling issue.
As a remedy for Saturday's attempt, mission managers plan to
begin that engine-cooling process roughly 30 minutes earlier in the launch
countdown, NASA's Artemis launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson said. But
a full explanation for the faulty sensor requires more data analysis by
engineers.
"The way the sensor is behaving doesn't line up with
the physics of the situation," said John Honeycutt, NASA's SLS program
manager.
The sensor was last checked and calibrated months ago in the
rocket factory, Honeycutt said. Replacing the sensor would require rolling the
rocket back to its assembly building, a process that could delay the mission
for months.
The first voyage of the SLS-Orion, a mission dubbed Artemis
I, aims to put the 5.75-million-pound vehicle through its paces in a rigorous
demonstration flight pushing its design limits, before NASA deems it reliable
enough to carry astronauts.
Named for the goddess who was Apollo's twin sister in
ancient Greek mythology, Artemis seeks to return astronauts to the moon's
surface as early as 2025, though many experts believe that time frame will
likely slip by a few years.
The last humans to walk on the moon were the two-man descent
team of Apollo 17 in 1972, following in the footsteps of 10 other astronauts
during five earlier missions beginning with Apollo 11 in 1969.
Artemis also is enlisting commercial and international help
to eventually establish a long-term lunar base as a stepping stone to even more
ambitious human voyages to Mars, a goal NASA officials say would probably take
until at least the late 2030s to achieve.
But NASA has many steps to take along the way, starting with
getting the SLS-Orion vehicle into space.
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