NASA Artemis I Moon rocket launch aborted: NASA's SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft mission is now delayed further. (Image Source: NASA)NASA Artemis I launch Live Updates: NASA has aborted its second attempt to launch the Artemis 1 mission due to a liquid hydrogen leak while fuelling the core stage of the Space Launch System. The launch vehicle will now be rolled back to the vehicle assembly building before the next launch attempt.
Team engineers tried to troubleshoot the issue three times but all attempts failed. If the launch is postponed to October, it will probably only happen in the second week because SpaceX’s Crew 5 mission to the International Space Station is scheduled for the first week of October.
A similar issue had plagued the first launch attempt on August 29, apart from the fact that one of the RS-25 engines was suffering from an engine bleed malfunction. There are two more potential launch windows for the mission on September 5 and September 6, but NASA is yet to announce whether it will make another attempt during one of those days.
“We don’t go until launch, not until we are ready. Especially now on a test flight. We need to make sure it is right before we put humans on top. This is part of the space business and I have told people this before. I have experienced this with my spaceflight experience. We scrubbed four times till we had a perfect mission the fourth time,” said NASA administrator Bill Nelson after the mission was scrubbed.
Nelson said that the mission management team will meet soon to see whether another attempt should be made on September 5 or September 6; the next available launch date. If that is not the case, the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft will be rolled back to the Vehicle Assembly Building to prepare them for a launch attempt in October.
The launch was the second attempt at the mission, after the initial launch attempt on August 29 had to be called off due to technical issues including a problem with one of the rocket’s four main engines.
Addressing a post-scrub press conference, Artemis Michael Sarafin said that it could take several weeks before the fault tree analysis of the leak and the solution for it are completed. This could involve the Space Launch System rocket being rolled back to the Vehicle Assembly Building for repairs. With these factors taken into account along with the conflict with the SpaceX Crew-5 mission in the first week of October, it is likely that NASA will only make the next attempt in the second half of October.
Getting to the root of the problem that caused the leak and solving it could take everal weeks according to Artemis mission manager Michael Sarafin
James Free says that the Space Launch System and the Orion spacecraft will have to be rolled back to the Vehicle Assembly Building.
James Free, associate administratorExploration Systems Development Mission Directorate NASA leaders, has hinted that the launch will only happen in 'the latter part of October.'
NASA leaders will provide an update about the mission at approximately 2 AM IST on September 4.
NASA leaders will provide an update about the mission at approximately 1.30 AM IST on September 4.
“We don’t go until launch, not until we are ready. Especially now on a test flight. We need to make sure it is right before we put humans on top. This is part of the space business and I have told people this before. I have experienced this with my spaceflight experience. We scrubbed four times till we had a perfect mission the fourth time,” said NASA administrator Bill Nelson during NASA’s livestream.
According to Nelson, the mission management team will meet and decide whether the space agency will make another launch attempt on September 5 or 6; the next available launch windows. If not, the launch vehicle will be moved back to the Vehicle Assembly building as NASA will consider a launch in October.
If NASA does consider an October launch, it will only happen in the middle of October because SpaceX’s Crew 5 mission to the International Space Station is scheduled for the first week of October.
The launch director has officially announced a scrub, meaning that the second attempt to launch the Artemis 1 mission has been aborted. Now, the launch teams will first begin emptying the liquid oxygen tank of the core stage before they empty the liquid hydrogen tank.
NASA’s second attempt at launching the Artemis 1 mission has officially been cancelled as launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson announces a scrub. Engineers will prioritise emptying the liquid oxygen tank.
Launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson has acknowledged the “no-go” recommendation but has decided to wait a little longer before making a decision. The launch vehicle is in an acceptable condition to hold as the launch team has the liquid oxygen in a stop-flow condition, which is safe. Teams are now awaiting a final decision from the launch director.
The launch team has presented a recommendation of “no-go” for the launch. Launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson has to now decide whether the launch should be cancelled.
As the engineering team consults with the test director after a third attempt to troubleshoot the hydrogen leak failed, here is a reminder of why NASA wants to return to the Moon.
The third attempt at troubleshooting the liquid hydrogen leak did not work. As soon as the flow was resumed, the leak returned when pressure was added
Liquid hydrogen flow has resumed as engineers opened the valve manually. Engineers are checking to see if the troubleshooting plan has worked.
Teams are now standing by to manually resume hydrogen fuelling for the core stage. Also, the core stage is officially in replenish mode for the liquid oxygen tank. At the same time, the teams working on the upper stage will start purge sequences for the ICPS at the top of the rocket. They will purge out the lines with nitrogen on the liquid oxygen side and helium on the liquid hydrogen. They are doing this ahead of time to make up for the time lost due to the leak in an effort to preserve the launch window.
Engineers have discussed options and are trying the first troubleshooting plan where they stopped the flow of hydrogen and allowed the connection to warm up for 30 minutes and then manually started the flow. On the other hand, liquid oxygen fuelling is going ahead as planned and the tank is currently in topping, where it alternates between fuelling and venting so that it fills to 100 per cent. They do this to replace what is lost by boil-off.
Artemis 1 is an uncrewed mission but the SLS rocket will be carrying passengers: three mannequins armed with a variety of sensors.
Looks like the pesky hydrogen leak is back again. This has "reoccurred again in a cavity between the ground and flight side plates of a quick disconnect in the engine section," according to information from NASA. Right now, NASA is figuring out how to fix the problem.
NASA has shown exactly how Orion will separate from the SLS rocket. Check out this detailed image below:
NASA's Artemis I mission will see the Orion spacecraft go around the far side of the Moon and return to Earth. The mission is carrying ten CubeSats satellitles as payload, and these are all designed to carry out specific scientific experiments. The satellites are meant to search for water and hydrogen. Some are also carrying biology experiments. The Orion spacecraft might be unmanned this time, but it will have three dummy ‘passengers’ as well.
These dummy passengers are mannequins, but not ordinary ones. These mannequins are 'made of material that mimic human bones, skin, and soft tissue,' as we noted earlier. The mannequins are also fitted with sensors to help NASA gauge how the human body fares in deep space. Read more about the Artemis I mission here.
Well, Artemis one is an uncrewed flight testing Orion and SLS's capabilities. The Artemi II mission is expected to be a crewed one, but it will go around the Moon. Artemi III is when we can expect Moon landings. NASA plans for humans to reach the Moon once again by 2025 and it will establish a permanent settlement to allow more trips in the future. Artemis missions also plan to send the first woman and people of colour to the Moon.
“In the beginning, people will only go to the moon for a week, but future Artemis missions will establish people there for a month or two. Eventually, permanent settlements will be made,” Juergen Schlutz, aerospace engineer at the ESA, had earlier said as reported by DW
For those wondering why Artemis 1 is such a big deal, even though no humans are abroad, it is because this is set to lay the path for future missions. NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) will carry the Orion spacecraft to the far side of the Moon. NASA says this is will "fly farther than any spacecraft built for humans has ever flown," and more importantly "Orion will stay in space longer than any human spacecraft has without docking to a space station." It will then "return home faster and hotter than ever before."
This mission will "demonstrate the performance of both Orion and the SLS rocket" and test NASA's capabilities to orbit the Moon and return to Earth.
NASA's SLS rocket will lift off exactly at 2.17 ET or 11.47 pm IST. The timing is critical and there's two good reasons why. In our explained article science and climate editor Amitabh Sinha lists out the two reasons why this precision is so important in space missions. The first is that everything in space is in constant motion, the Moon, and the Earth and the idea is to find the shortest distance to the destination.The other is because of fuel efficiency since NASA cannot refuel in space. Read more about this in our explained article here.
The liquid oxygen flow to the core stage rocket has now been restored to full speed. NASA reports that liquid oxygen levels are now at 40%.
The Artemis I rocket core stage liquid oxygen has been filled 33%, while the liquid hydrogen fill currently stands at 2%, reports the official ground team handle on Twitter
After a leak in the engine cavity was detected, the fuelling process has now been switched to a manual method after warming up the liquid hydrogen line.
A leak in the engine cavity of the Artemis I rocket has resulted in the halting of the process of filling the rocket with liquid hydrogen for the launch. “Teams are troubleshooting by warming up the area. Standby for updates,” said an official tweet by the NASA's Exploration Ground Systems handle.
NASA has released a new video showing the tanking process of the Artemis I rocket ahead of its launch. Check it out in the tweet below.
NASA is set to launch the Artemis I rocket exactly at 2:17pm eastern daylight time (11:47 pm IST), but is the set time so specific? Find out in our in-depth story ahead of the launch.
With Artemis I, NASA is sending no humans to the Lunar surface, instead the Orion spacecraft will include three mannequins named Helga, Zohar and Commander Moonikin Campos, complete with plastic models of radiation-sensitive organs. These include the uterus and the lungs, and will help scientists study the effects of radiation in space.
With Artemis II, the second mission in the program, NASA will be sending a four man crew to orbit the Moon and return. While there will be no landing on the Moon, the mission will facilitate the farthest distance into space visited by humans, which at its peak will be about 4600 miles beyond the dark side of the Moon.
During Artemis III, Scientists aim to send a SpaceX spacecraft to the Moon's South Pole, where they will study the frozen craters on the Moon's surface that haven't seen sunlight in billions of years.
In Greek mythology, Artemis is the goddess of the Moon and the twin sister of Apollo. Apollo, is the name of the program that took humans to the moon about 50 years ago. With the new Artemis program, NASA will be looking to not just repeat history, but to go further beyond.
While the entire Apollo program was dedicated to reaching the Moon, the larger goal of the Artemis program is to investigate the possibility of establishing a base on the Lunar surface.
The Artemis I rocket will be covering a total distance of 2.1 million kilometers through its mission, but it will be reaching the outer layers of the Earth's atmosphere, about 161km from the surface in just 8 minutes. The rocket will be buring through 90,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen and oxygen each minute during this stage, after which the core stage of the rocket will fall off into the Pacific Ocean.
Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant is one of the passengers on board the Orion spacecraft that will be launching with the Artemis I rocket. Unlike the more household use-cases for Alexa though, the assistant will be helping out the Moon mission in a technology demonstration called Callisto.
"Callisto will demonstrate a first-of-its-kind technology that could be used in the future to enable astronauts to be more self-reliant as they explore deep space," Lisa Callahan, vice president and general manager of commercial civil space for Lockheed Martin said in a statement back in January 2022.
The Artemis I launch will be the first visit to the Moon since the Apollo 17 Mission in December 1972, the final mission in NASA's Apollo program. The mission also broke several records at the time, including the longest crewed lunar landing mission (12 days, 14 hours).
The Artemis I launch was originally slated for August 29. However, one of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket’s four RS-25 engines malfunctioned during the tanking stages. This lead to the team postponing the launch. Read our complete analysis on the matter.
NASA has revealed that the second attempt to launch the Artemis I rocket and kick off the mission will take place on September 3, starting at 2:17pm Florida time.