NASA’s Moon rocket experiences fuel leak during critical test before launch
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NASA suffered a leak while refueling its new moon rocket on Monday in its final make-or-break test that will determine when astronauts can launch on a lunar fly-around.
The launch team began loading the 98-meter rocket with super-cooled hydrogen and oxygen at noon at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. More than 2.6 million liters had to be flowed into tanks and left on the ship for several hours, mimicking the final stages of a real countdown.
But just hours into the day-long operation, excessive hydrogen was detected near the bottom of the rocket. Hydrogen loading was temporarily halted, with only half of the core stage filled.
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Loading resumed after about an hour, but was once again halted briefly until resuming after 4 pm ET.
The launch team attempted to address the problem by using techniques developed during the only other Space Launch System (SLS) rocket launch three years earlier. That first test flight suffered from a hydrogen leak before it finally took off.
The crew – Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency and NASA astronauts Reed Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch – monitored the crucial dress rehearsal from home at the Johnson Space Center, about 1,600 kilometers away in Houston. They have been in quarantine for a week and a half, waiting for the results of the practice countdown.
The day-long operation will determine when they can set out on the first crewed lunar voyage in more than half a century.
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weather delay
NASA, which was two days behind due to bitter cold, set its countdown clocks to stop half a minute before reaching zero, just before the engines were to ignite.
The clocks started ticking Saturday night, giving launch controllers a chance to go through all the activities and deal with any rocket problems. Hydrogen leak puts first SLS rocket on pad for months in 2022.
If the refueling demo can be successfully completed on time, NASA could launch Commander Wiseman and his crew to the moon as soon as Sunday.
The rocket must fly by February 11, otherwise the mission will be called off until March. The space agency only has a few days in any given month to launch rockets, and extreme cold has already shortened the February launch window by two days.
The approximately 10-day mission will send astronauts around the mysterious far side of the moon and then directly back to Earth, with the goal of testing the capsule’s life support and other critical systems. The crew will not orbit the Moon or attempt to land.
NASA last sent astronauts to the Moon during the Apollo program in the 1960s and 1970s. The new Artemis program aims for a more sustained presence on the Moon, with Wiseman’s crew setting the stage for future Moon landings by other astronauts.
