Mission managers at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida aborted Monday’s liftoff with 40 minutes left on the countdown clock when a sensor indicated that one of the four RS-25 engines on the Mega Space Launch System (SLS) rocket’s core stage was not firing. properly cooled. A review found the problem was a faulty sensor, not a failure of the cooling system or the engine itself, and the launch team said it would be ignored if it malfunctioned again during refueling for Saturday’s scheduled 2.17pm attempt. EDT (7.17pm BST) . “We’ve convinced ourselves beyond a shadow of a doubt that we have good quality liquid hydrogen going through the engines,” John Honeycutt, Artemis program manager, said in a pre-launch press briefing. The engines must match the -250C (-420F) temperature of the liquid hydrogen fuel at launch, or they could be damaged and disabled during the eight-minute climb to low Earth orbit, he said. NASA has set a two-hour launch window for the maiden flight of the first manned lunar mission in 50 years, the Artemis 1 test mission featuring a six-person next-generation Orion capsule atop SLS, the most powerful rocket ever to leave the Earth. This mission is unmanned. But a successful 38-day flight 40,000 miles (64,000 km) past the moon and back, ending with a dive in the Pacific Ocean on October 11, will pave the way for astronauts to board Artemis II in 2024 .the long-awaited next human landing, Artemis III, scheduled for 2025. Only 12 people, all Americans, have ever walked on the moon, most recently Apollo 17 in December 1972. NASA promised that the Artemis program, named for Apollo’s twin sister in Greek mythology, would include lunar tracks from the first woman and first person of color. The weather, which also would have prevented the first launch attempt regardless of the engine sensor problem, looks slightly more favorable for Saturday. A 60 percent chance of acceptable conditions at the launch window’s opening increases to 80 percent by the time it closes, according to Melody Lovin, weather officer for the 45th Space Force Wing. “We could get a few showers that come close to the coastline and maybe a crack of lightning and lightning with that,” he said. “This is definitely a threat again, a similar threat to the one we had the other day. [But] I don’t expect the weather to be good for the shows.” One of the most unpredictable elements of any rocket launch is the weather, and aborted launches at Cape Canaveral, caused by thunderstorms, low clouds, rain, high winds or other violations of strict weather restrictions, are not uncommon. Monday offers an additional backup launch opportunity, a 90-minute window that opens at 5.42pm. EDT (10.42 p.m. BST), but beyond that engineers will consider returning the rocket to the space center’s giant Vehicle Assembly Building for maintenance that could not be performed at the launch site. Bill Nelson, the head of NASA and a former space shuttle astronaut, said the entire craft, from its propulsion systems to Orion’s heat shield, which must withstand temperatures of 2,800 C (5,000 F) on reentry, will undergo severe “stress test”. make sure it was safe for human spaceflight. Ultimately, NASA aims to land humans on Mars around the middle of the next decade, having tested the hardware and systems needed for long-duration spaceflight, including a lunar base, during the Artemis missions. “This is an extremely complex machine and system. Millions of parts,” Nelson told reporters at Cape Canaveral. “There are, in fact, risks. But are these risks acceptable? I leave that to the experts. My role is to remind them that you don’t take risks that are not acceptable.” The cost of the Artemis program, which is years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget, has also raised concern. It is estimated to have reached $93 billion (£81 billion) by 2025, with each of the first four launches alone costing an “unsustainable” $4.1 billion, according to NASA’s independent inspector general. One of the differences between the 1970s Apollo program – the last three moon missions of which were canceled due to cost – and Artemis, which remains fully funded, is political will, according to John Logsdon, founder of Space Policy Institute at George Washington University. . “For the first time since Apollo, two presidents in a row [Donald Trump and Joe Biden] they have agreed that this has to be done, this is the goal of going back to the moon,” he said. “There is political support that was missing in the past.”
