After engine difficulties interrupted the initial countdown this week, NASA will attempt to launch its Artemis 1 once more on Saturday. Managers said they are altering fueling practices to address the problem.

Artemis 1 Ahead of VAB Rollback
(Photo : NASA/Ben Smegelsky/Wikimedia Commons)
Artemis 1 Ahead of VAB Rollback

Why Artemis 1 Launch Postponed

According to Fox Weather, launch Director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson granted the go signal to start fueling the SLS on Monday about 1 a.m. after a lightning delay. The launch director scrubbed the liftoff attempt just after 8:30 a.m. due to the engine temperature, despite several potential hydrogen leak issues emerging during the countdown. 

He said that they got off to a late start because of the weather, which pushed their tanking timeline into the window. Then they ran into a technical issue, which required more time to fix than they had left in the window. 

The bleed mechanism used to cool the rocket engine down to a very low temperature was the technological problem, not the engine's physical components. Engine 3 was not up to temperature, but engines 1, 2, and 4 were. According to NASA managers, this might be due to a hydrogen leak or a sensor problem. Liquid hydrogen, a small chemical that also caused issues for the space shuttle program, is used to power the SLS.

NASA confirmed the engine problem on its Twitter account. 

NASA experts saw what they initially believed to be a crack or other fault on the core stage, which is the large orange fuel tank with the four main engines, later in the morning. However, they eventually determined that it was likely just a deposit of frost in a fissure of the insulating foam.

The Space Launch System rocket was being fueled with roughly one million gallons of super-cold hydrogen and oxygen when NASA repeatedly stopped and restarted the process due to a leak of highly explosive hydrogen. The leak occurred in the exact same location as seepage occurred during a dress rehearsal in the spring.

After the launch was postponed, engineers kept trying to find the root cause of the engine problem. According to NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, this is a very intricate machine and system, and since everything has to function, you shouldn't light the candle until everything is ready.

Nelson remarked, "It's just part of the space industry and it's part of, particularly, a test flight."

The issues on Monday brought up memories of NASA's space shuttle program, when hydrogen fuel leaks in 1990 disrupted countdowns and delayed a number of missions.

Artemis 1 Launch Next Attempt

A crew capsule was being constructed to be placed in lunar orbit using the rocket. The spacecraft was planned to splash down in the Pacific Ocean after a six-week voyage and return to Earth in October.

The NASA spacecraft, which has a 322-foot (98-meter) wingspan, is more powerful than the Saturn V that the Apollo astronauts flew on.

Launch commentator Derrol Nail noted that engineers were still looking into the engine problem and that we should wait to see what emerged from their test results.

An empty crew capsule is perched atop the 98-meter rocket that is still on the Kennedy Space Center's launch pad. It is considered the most powerful rocket that NASA has ever produced. The capsule will attempt to go around the moon and back using the Space Launch System rocket (SLS). There will only be three test dummies on board. It will be the first spacecraft to reach the moon since NASA's Apollo program fifty years ago if it becomes successful.

ALSO READ: NASA Yeast Mission: Experiments on Artemis 1 to Help Astronauts Survive Cosmic Radiation

Orion Capsule Communication Problems

A communication issue with the Orion capsule also needs to be resolved by launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson and crew.

An 11-minute communication glitch between launch control and Orion late on Sunday was one of the subjects of the investigation. Even though it was fixed by Monday morning, NASA needed to know what went wrong so that the launch could go ahead.

RELATED ARTICLE: NASA's Artemis 1 Mega Moon Mission Launch Date Unveiled: Potential Liftoff by End of Summer

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