Status: 03.09.2022 2:48 p.m
Today, NASA wants to make another attempt to go to the moon with its “Artemis” mission. But the weather forecast is not looking good. There are also technical problems again.
In the second attempt, NASA’s “Artemis I” mission to the moon is scheduled to start today. The time window for the launch of the unmanned SLS rocket and its “Orion” capsule opens at 2:17 p.m. local time (8:17 p.m. CEST).
During the preparations, however, the space agency is again struggling with technical problems. As the team began refueling the rocket, an overpressure alarm sounded. The process was interrupted and then continued. Minutes later, however, hydrogen leaked from one of the rocket’s engines. Refueling was halted while engineers attempted to patch a leak in a seal.
Technical difficulties had already prevented the planned launch of the unmanned rocket into space on Monday. At the beginning of the week, a defective sensor in an engine and leaking fuel interrupted take-off preparations.
Hundreds of thousands of onlookers expected
Another hurdle for today’s launch is the weather: Yesterday, NASA saw only a 60 percent chance that the weather conditions at the Cape Canaveral Cosmodrome in Florida would be good enough. Rain showers could occur especially at the beginning of the two-hour possible time window for the start – at the end of the period there is an 80 percent chance, NASA said on its website. The authorities expect up to 400,000 onlookers who want to watch the launch of the rocket.
In addition to the technical problems, those responsible also felt that the weather was too unstable on Monday to start “Artemis I” within the two-hour launch window. The rocket can only take off at certain times, orbit the earth and then break out of the earth’s gravitational field in the right direction to the moon.
Moon landing now no earlier than 2025
NASA wants to launch the “Orion” space capsule from Cape Canaveral with the help of the “Space Launch System” heavy-duty rocket, then orbit the moon and land again in the Pacific around 40 days later. The “Artemis I” test flight also serves to enable people to be sent to Earth’s satellite again in a few years’ time on the “Artemis II” mission. The rocket system had already been extensively tested twice at the spaceport. Both times various problems had arisen.
With the “Artemis” mission, US astronauts should actually land on the moon again by 2024, for the first time a woman and a non-white person. This is now planned for 2025 at the earliest.