NASA to make second attempt at debut moon rocket launch on Saturday

Plans call for the 32-story-tall SLS rocket to blast off from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, sending its Orion capsule on an uncrewed, six-week test flight around the moon and back to Earth.

The long-awaited launch would kick off the U.S. space agency’s moon-to-Mars Artemis program, the successor to the Apollo moon project of the 1960s and 1970s.

The first voyage of the SLS-Orion, a mission dubbed Artemis I, aims to put the 5.75-million-pound vehicle through its paces in a rigorous demonstration flight pushing its design limits before NASA deems it reliable enough to carry astronauts.

NASA’s initial Artemis I launch attempt on Monday ended with a cooling problem with one of the rocket’s main-stage engines, forcing a halt to the countdown and a postponement.

At a news briefing on Tuesday, NASA officials said they hoped to have those issues resolved in time for a launch retry on Saturday.

With Artemis missions, NASA aims to land the first woman and first person of color on the Moon, using innovative technologies to explore more of the lunar surface than ever before. “We will collaborate with commercial and international partners and establish the first long-term presence on the Moon,” NASA said. 

NASA will build an Artemis Base Camp on the surface and the Gateway in lunar orbit. These elements will allow our robots and astronauts to explore more and conduct more science than ever before.

Engineers are evaluating data gathered during the Artemis I launch attempt Monday, Aug. 29, when the rocket’s engines could not get to the proper temperature range required to start the engines at liftoff and ran out of time in the two-hour launch window to continue. 

With the inputs from the Reuters.

First article

Plans call for the 32-story-tall SLS rocket to blast off from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, sending its Orion capsule on an uncrewed, six-week test flight around the moon and back to Earth.

The long-awaited launch would kick off the U.S. space agency’s moon-to-Mars Artemis program, the successor to the Apollo moon project of the 1960s and 1970s.

The first voyage of the SLS-Orion, a mission dubbed Artemis I, aims to put the 5.75-million-pound vehicle through its paces in a rigorous demonstration flight pushing its design limits before NASA deems it reliable enough to carry astronauts.

NASA’s initial Artemis I launch attempt on Monday ended with a cooling problem with one of the rocket’s main-stage engines, forcing a halt to the countdown and a postponement.

At a news briefing on Tuesday, NASA officials said they hoped to have those issues resolved in time for a launch retry on Saturday.

With Artemis missions, NASA aims to land the first woman and first person of color on the Moon, using innovative technologies to explore more of the lunar surface than ever before. “We will collaborate with commercial and international partners and establish the first long-term presence on the Moon,” NASA said. 

NASA will build an Artemis Base Camp on the surface and the Gateway in lunar orbit. These elements will allow our robots and astronauts to explore more and conduct more science than ever before.

Engineers are evaluating data gathered during the Artemis I launch attempt Monday, Aug. 29, when the rocket’s engines could not get to the proper temperature range required to start the engines at liftoff and ran out of time in the two-hour launch window to continue. 

With the inputs from the Reuters.

First article