Nasa cannot yet commit to a new launch date for its Artemis I rocket as it is “too early to say what the options are”, a spokesperson for the cancelled mission has said.
Artemis Mission Manager Mike Sarafin said during a press conference on Monday afternoon that his team “will come back and talk about where we stand tomorrow evening”.
Nasa has now scheduled that press conference for 6pm EDT Tuesday evening, and will stream the event live on the space agency’s website.
It follows the last minute scrubbing of the highly anticipated Artemis I mission launch on Monday, which would have seen the first flight of Nasa’s huge new Space Launch System (SLS) Moon rocket. When it launches, the SLS will loft an uncrewed Orion space capsule toward the Moon on a 42-day mission to test the spacecraft ahead of the crewed missions to the Moon planned in 2024 and 2025 as part of Nasa’s Artemis Moon program.
Just when Artemis I will no launch is uncertain, but Nasa did have two backup launch windows blocked out of the rocket on Friday 2 September, and Monday 5 September.
“There's a nonzero chance we'll have a launch opportunity on Friday,” Mr Sarafin told reporters Monday, noting it would depend on what Nasa engineers find in the data from the scrubbed launch. “We're gonna play all nine innings here, you know. And we're not ready to give up yet.”
Artemis, according to Nasa, experienced a number of problems that cascaded in the moments before its scheduled launch.
First, Nasa had trouble with the “engine bleed” of one the four RS-25 engines on the SLS core stage, a process where a small amount of cold, liquid hydrogen fuel is pumped into the engines to chill them down before they experience the full pressure flows of liquid hydrogen fuel needed for launch.
But Nasa also found a vent valve in the rocket’s liquid hydrogen tank was not working as expected, which made the the engine bleed problem worse, according to Mr Sarafin.
“Rhe challenge that that created was we want to increase the pressure in the tank in order to establish the hydrogen bleed and the vent valve wasn't cooperating with us,” he said. “That's at the point where the team decided that it was appropriate to to declare the scrub, because we just weren't going to make the two hours window.”
Additionally, bad weather encroached on either end of the two hour launch window that began at 8.33am EDT.
“We would have been no go for weather at the beginning of the window due to precipitation,” Mr Sarafin told reporters, “and later on in the window we would have been no go for lightning.”
While Nasa officials remain optimistic that Artemis I could launch as soon as Friday, or at least by the second, Monday 5 September backup launch date, Artemis I could be delayed to mid-September or even later, according to estimates. Nasa officials, including Administrator Bill Nelson, told reporters that the space agency’s approach was to fly the big rocket when it was ready to fly, and no sooner.
“It's not going to fly until it's ready,” Mr Nelson said. “There are millions of components of this rocket and its systems, and needless to say the complexity is daunting when you bring it all into the focus of a countdown.”
Additional reporting by Associated Press
