NASA’s Artemis 1 Won’t Even Try Another Launch Attempt For Weeks

NASA’s 30-story Space Launch System rocket will not fly next week and may return to the space agency’s massive Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center for troubleshooting.

Engineers will attempt to address the liquid hydrogen leak that prevented it from blasting off Saturday morning.

This follows separate engine issues that scrubbed the initial launch attempt of the Artemis 1 mission on Monday.

The leak first cropped up as NASA began loading the liquid hydrogen propellant at around 7:15 a.m. EDT. The launch team tried three times to troubleshoot the issue and start the LH2 flowing again, but each time the leak returned.

After four hours, the launch director called a scrub for the day’s attempt, just three hours before the window for liftoff was set to open.

At a press conference Saturday afternoon Artemis mission manager Mike Sarafin said the leak was tied to an inadvertent overpressure event that saw pressure in the liquid hydrogen line rise to triple what it should be.

Potential launch windows for the mission were available Monday, September 5 and the following day, but NASA has opted instead to wait until at least the next available launch period, which begins September 19. However, conflicts with other missions scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral could push the launch back to October.

Artemis I’s mission profile involves more than a month of travel around the far side of the moon and back to Earth for a blazing fast re-entry and splashdown return in the ocean.

The Space Launch System was originally meant to launch for the first time as early as 2016 but has now been subject to numerous delays.

Artemis 1 is the first major step in NASA’s grand plan to finally follow up the Apollo program by sending astronauts to the surface of the moon, setting up a permanent base and gleaning insights that will inform eventual crewed missions to Mars in the 2030s.

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