The first in a series of missions, NASA said the Artemis 1 mission will provide a foundation for human deep space exploration.
NASA called off the launch of its mighty new moon rocket on its debut flight with three test dummies aboard Monday after a last-minute cascade of problems culminating in unexplained engine trouble.
The next Artemis 1 launch attempt will not take place until Friday at the earliest and could be off until mid-September or later.
As precious minutes ticked away Monday morning, NASA repeatedly stopped and started the fueling of the Space Launch System rocket because of a leak of highly explosive hydrogen, eventually succeeding in reducing the seepage to acceptable levels. The leak happened in the same place that saw seepage during a dress rehearsal in the spring.
The fueling already was running nearly an hour late because of thunderstorms off Florida’s Kennedy Space Center.
Then, NASA ran into new trouble when it was unable to properly chill one of the rocket’s four main engines, officials said. Engineers continued working to pinpoint the source of the problem after the launch postponement was announced.
“This is a very complicated machine, a very complicated system, and all those things have to work, and you don’t want to light the candle until it’s ready to go,“ said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.
Referring to launch delays, he said: “It’s just part of the space business and it’s part of, particularly, a test flight.”
The mission, when it happens, will be the first flight in NASA’s Artemis project, a quest to put astronauts back on the moon for the first time since the Apollo program ended 50 years ago.
NASA said the Artemis 1 mission will provide a foundation for human deep space exploration.
It’s a critical test drive, of sorts, to check out the Orion spacecraft in a spaceflight environment and how it performs on its re-entry, splashdown and recovery. NASA said a successful mission will demonstrate its capability to „extend human existence to the moon and beyond.“
By „beyond,“ they mean Mars.
„When we think about Artemis, we focus a lot on the moon,“ said chief astronaut Reid Wiseman. „But I just want everybody in this room and everybody watching to remember our sights are not set on the Moon. Our sights are set clearly on Mars.“
RELATED: Artemis update: Moon rocket on track for Monday launch despite launch pad lightning strikes
The Orion is „most powerful rocket in the world and will fly farther than any spacecraft built for humans has ever flown,“ according to NASA. The SLS rocket will produce 8.8 million pounds of thrust during liftoff as it launches the nearly six-million-pounds Orion to orbit.
„Our teams have been working extremely hard for a very, very long time to get to this point and this is very special and we’re extremely excited,” said Artemis I flight director Rick LaBrode.
RELATED: NASA updates Moon/Mars mission plans during media day at Johnson Space Center
Unlike the Apollo missions to the moon in the late 60s and 70s, Orion will travel thousands of miles beyond the moon during the four to six-week mission.
“This is a mission that truly will do what hasn’t been done and learn what isn’t known,” said Mike Sarafin, Artemis I mission manager at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
