NASA’s Artemis I launch has officially been delayed until November

2 years ago

The long-anticipated motorboat of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket has been pushed backmost to mid-November aft NASA waved disconnected its September 27th motorboat plans successful the aftermath of Hurricane Ian (via Space.com). The abstraction bureau announced connected Friday that it’s aiming to compression successful the Artemis I motorboat betwixt November 12th and November 27th.

While determination was initially a flimsy accidental that NASA’s adjacent motorboat effort could instrumentality spot successful October, that was yet scrapped aft NASA decided to rotation the rocket back to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) to shield it from the storm. NASA successfully secured the rocket connected Tuesday after an hours-long trek to the VAB.

Hurricane Ian made landfall successful Florida arsenic a Category 4 hurricane, but weakened into a tropical tempest by the clip it reached the Kennedy Space Center connected Thursday. NASA says “there was nary harm to Artemis formation hardware,” and that its facilities lone suffered “minor h2o intrusion.”

NASA’s Artemis I launch volition nonstop an uncrewed Orion capsule connected a travel astir the Moon, paving the mode for aboriginal missions that volition bring the archetypal pistillate and idiosyncratic of colour to the lunar surface. The agency’s archetypal motorboat effort was chopped abbreviated aft the rocket experienced motor issues, portion its 2nd was marred by a “large” leak that occurred erstwhile engineers filled up the rocket with chilled liquid hydrogen fuel.

Subsequent investigating of the rocket’s fueling system showed that the leak was inactive present, but astatine a much “manageable” level. Now that the rocket’s backmost astatine the VAB, NASA says it volition “prepare for further inspections” and retest the Flight Termination System, which the Space Force uses to destruct the rocket if it goes disconnected course.