US space agency NASA was forced to suspend the launch of the ambitious Artemis program’s inaugural mission for the second time in a week after the launch team failed to resolve a liquid hydrogen leak despite various troubleshooting procedures ahead of the afternoon launch window. Saturday local time, in what space analysts are calling a “disappointing but not surprising” development.
Chinese space analysts said the issues leading to the delay seemed “reasonable” given that it has been half a decade since the US successfully launched a mega rocket capable of sending humans to the moon. However, they criticized the political considerations and Cold War mentality behind NASA’s Artemis program, which they said could lead to disastrous results.
The scrub was called at 11:17 am. EST on Saturday, three hours before the start of the launch window, which has certainly disappointed some space enthusiasts.
Liquid hydrogen is one of the propellants used in the large core stage of the rocket. The leak prevented the launch team from being able to fill the liquid hydrogen tank. It was not the first time that hydrogen leaks have thwarted efforts to fuel the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, as similar ones occurred during dress rehearsals and the first attempt at launch. But NASA officials described the leak on Saturday as much larger and are now studying the problem and discussing next steps, US media reported.
The stack, including the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft, must return to the Vehicle Assembly Building unless they could remain at the launch site until another attempt, US officials said, which would not happen on the current launch. period ending on Tuesday. Instead, they said the earliest they could try for another launch would be late September.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said the Space Shuttle was sent back to the Vehicle Assembly Building 20 times before launch, and the cost of two cleanups is far less than one failure. “We don’t launch until we think it’s right,” Nelson said. “These teams have worked on this and this is what they’ve come to. I see it as part of our space program, where safety is at the top of the list.”
The problems encountered so far with the SLS rocket were quite logical, given that the US has stopped developing such large-sized landers since it last managed to send a man to the Earth’s natural satellite half a century ago, Wang Ya ‘nan. , the editor-in-chief of the Beijing-based journal Aerospace Knowledge, told the Global Times on Sunday.
Wang said being able to spot problems immediately and accurately shows the maturity of US space launch technology. “Avoiding potential hazards during launch is a common practice in the industry,” he said.
US NPR reported on Sunday, citing comments from NASA’s inspector general, that each of the Artemis program’s first flights will cost more than $4 billion, excluding billions of dollars in the development stage, and some critics have charged that the program will it was too expensive to be sustainable if NASA continues to depend on this rocket and capsule, both of which come at a heavy price.
In fact, the SLS rocket, while inheriting a number of key technologies from the Space Shuttle, such as its main engines and rocket boosters, is no stranger to delays. The rocket is already years behind its original schedule, as the US Congress wanted it to fly in 2016, just five years after NASA retired its aging fleet of space shuttles.
Despite the recent Artemis 1 delays, Nelson said Saturday that NASA’s plan to launch Artemis 2 in 2024 and Artemis 3 in 2025 remains intact.
The US space agency aims to land different crews of astronauts in previously unexplored regions of the Moon – the Artemis II and Artemis III missions, planned for 2024 and 2025 respectively – and eventually deliver manned missions to Mars.
But Chinese space analysts have questioned the nature of the Artemis program, which they said is political with a strong Cold War mentality, pointing to a recent State of the Space Industrial Base 2022 report compiled by US officials from the US Space Force, Defense Innovation Unit . Air Force and Air Force Research Laboratory that claimed China could overtake the US to become the world’s dominant space power “economically, diplomatically and militarily” by 2045.
U.S. officials argue in the report released Aug. 24 that the U.S. must act quickly to maintain its advantage over Beijing, including using more commercial technology and setting long-term, bipartisan policy goals.
“This vision must be as clear and ambitious in scale and timing as the DPRK and more inclusive of international cooperation across the spectrum of commercial, civil and space national security activities,” the report says. “For the first time, panelists expressed concerns that China appears to be on track to overtake the U.S. as the dominant space power by 2045 or possibly sooner unless proactive steps are taken now to support our nation’s leadership.”
It shows the lack of US confidence and with the image of China as an imaginary enemy in space and the promotion of space colonialism, Washington is trying to repeat the Space Race it did with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, Song Zhongping, a time observer and television commentator, told the Global Times on Sunday, adding that such a mindset, which contains nothing of scientific but purely political goals, could lead to disastrous results in the current rigorous Artemis program.
Song also slammed so-called international cooperation that excludes China, which the US targets as “hypocrisy”, saying such narrow-minded and selfish acts would only hinder the progress of human beings as a whole in space exploration.
