Fingers Crossed: NASA Delays Launch Of Artemis 1 Again – ExtremeTech

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Artemis draws her bow back again. After scrubbing two launch attempts in quick succession, NASA has set a new launch window for its Space Launch System’s Artemis 1 mission to the Moon.

Including the scrubbed launch attempts of the past two weeks, NASA has never conducted a successful test of the SLS rocket’s cryofuel systems. But it hopes to change that record starting next week. The agency has planned a “kick start bleed test” demonstration that will allow teams to confirm that the hydrogen leak has indeed been repaired. It will also test new propellant methods designed to reduce thermal and pressure loads on the system and evaluate ‘pre-pressurization’ methods. (Say that five times fast!)

During the countdown, engineers begin thermal conditioning of the SLS rocket’s four RS-25 engines by pre-cooling them. To do this, a trickle of liquid hydrogen must be “drained” to the engines and at the same time the tank of the core stage must be filled. Leaks in the hydrogen system, along with a temperature sensor showing engine no. 3 was too warm, prompting the agency to chafe the August 29 launch attempt during the countdown.

The agency has set a new date for the refueling demonstration: September 21. If all goes well, the SLS will launch during a 70-minute window that opens on September 27 at 11:37 a.m. EDT. For all these reasons, however, the agency has a backup start date of October 2nd.

Over the weekend, Artemis I teams completed repairs to a hydrogen leak area. NASA said in a blog post, “Engineers reconnected the ground and rocket-side plates to the liquid hydrogen fuel supply line quick-disconnect connector where two gaskets were replaced last week. This week teams will conduct tests at ambient conditions to ensure there is a solid bond between the two plates before testing again during the cryogenic fueling demonstration we’ll see if the agency can get it right in time.

“Exploration is in our DNA”

On September 12, 1962, President John F. Kennedy spoke to students at Rice University in Houston about America’s nascent space program. During his speech, Kennedy provided an eloquent answer to the question: Why even bother going to the moon?

“We choose to go to the moon,” Kennedy said. “We choose to go to the moon and do the other things in this decade, not because they are easy, but because they are difficult, because this goal will serve to organize and to the best of our energies and abilities measure because this challenge is one we are willing to accept, one we do not want to postpone, and one we want to win.”

Kennedy spoke in an atmosphere of deep tension amid the Sputnik panic. His bold idealism contrasted with the pale underbelly of Cold War realpolitik. At the time, the newly formed National Aeronautics and Space Administration was just getting started, and it needed money — and fast. Sixty years later, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and other NASA officials gathered at Rice University to commemorate Kennedy’s historic speech. Where Kennedy first stood up and asked America to bless “a giant rocket…on an untried mission to an unknown celestial body,” Nelson asked a weary and skeptical nation to keep the faith. Then as now, NASA is about more than politics, money, or preeminence in space. It’s about remembering to look up at the sky in the face of fear.

“We’ll start when we’re ready,” Nelson said at the Houston event. “But mark my words, we’re going. When the last move is given, Artemis I will roar to life and ascend to the moon. And every observation we make and every lesson we learn in this first Artemis voyage prepares us and the way for humans to push even further.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, Mars is calling. Why? Because exploring is in our DNA.”

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