CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A fuel leak that thwarted NASA’s second attempt to launch its new Artemis 1 lunar rocket on Saturday (September 3) will likely take weeks to fix, and could even force the mega-rocket off its launch pad , according to space agency officials said.
The liquid hydrogen leak occurred on Saturday morning as NASA attempted to fuel its massive Space Launch System (SLS) mega launch rocket Artemis 1an unmanned test flight for the moon, from Pad 39B here at Kennedy Space Center (KSC). Despite three separate attempts to fix the leak, engineers were unable to stem it and eventually pulled out to assess the situation further.
This assessment, and the repair work it eventually recommends, will keep Artemis 1 grounded for about two more weeks at a minimum.
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“We won’t be launching during this launch window,” NASA associate administrator for exploration systems development Jim Free said during a Saturday afternoon post-launch briefing.
This launch period ends on Tuesday (September 6). Artemis 1 will now have to wait until the next window, which runs from September 16 to October 4, to try again. But that could end up slipping deeper in October – another window runs from October 17 to October 31 – due to security requirements that could force the SLS rocket back into the cavernous Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB). ) from KSC during repairs. (There is also a potential conflict during the previous window: SpaceX’s Crew-5 Astronaut Mission to the International Space Station is scheduled to lift off October 3 from KSC’s Pad 39A.)
The first launch attempt of Artemis 1, Monday August 29, was washed after the team noticed that one of the four RS-25 engines that power the SLS core stage was not cooling properly before launch. Scans quickly traced this problem to a faulty temperature sensor, and the team decided to moving forward with another trial on Saturday.
Mission team members also managed to troubleshoot a hydrogen leak during Monday’s test, but the one they saw on Saturday was different: it was much larger. Saturday’s leak occurred near the base of the SLS rocket in what NASA calls a ‘quick disconnect’, a fitting that connects a liquid hydrogen fuel line to the main booster to power it for launch . The leak occurred after a brief “inadvertent” fuel line overpressure that was three times the acceptable pressure, said Mike Sarafin, NASA’s Artemis 1 mission manager.
“It was not a manageable leak,” Sarafin said. The leak led to levels of flammable hydrogen gas near the rocket that were several times above the acceptable range, he added. It’s too early to tell whether the leak was caused by the overpressurization event (which was triggered by an erroneous manual command from the Launch Control Center) or not, Sarafin said.
“We want to be deliberate and careful before drawing conclusions here, because correlation does not equal causation,” he said.
One thing is clear, however: the soft seal of the quick disconnect will probably need to be replaced. NASA engineers will meet next week to decide whether it can be done at Launch Pad 39B (which would require building a special enclosure around the site) or whether the 322-foot-tall (98-meter) rocket should be brought back inside the VAB for easier access.
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As it stands, the SLS rocket is soon to return to VAB to test its flight termination system, which is designed to destroy the rocket with explosives if it veers off course. The US Space Force, which oversees the eastern range for rocket launches, requires NASA to test the security system every 25 days, and this can only be done in the VAB.
The 25-day deadline for Artemis 1 is fast approaching, so NASA would need a waiver to keep the moon rocket on pad if it wanted to fix the leak there. It is unclear at this time whether the mission team plans to request such a waiver.
“I think we’re going to talk with the Range about the possibilities,” Free said.
The picture will likely start to become clearer early next week after the Artemis 1 team has had more time to analyze the data and discuss options, Free and Sarafin said. But they stressed that canceling the launch today was the right decision, as did NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, who also attended the briefing.
“Although we didn’t have the launch we wanted today, I can tell you that these teams know exactly what they’re doing, and I’m very proud of them,” Nelson said.
Both scrubs will end up costing NASA money, as Artemis 1 will have to use more liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellant than originally planned. But that extra expense is acceptable, Nelson pointed out.
“The cost of two scrubs is much less than one failure,” he said.
Artemis 1 will send an unmanned Orion capsule on a long journey to lunar orbit and back. The mission – the first of NASA’s Artemis lunar exploration program – is designed to show that the two vehicles are ready to carry astronauts, which will happen for the first time during the Artemis 2 flight around the moon in 2024 , if all goes as planned.
Ten tiny cubesats fly on Artemis 1, conducting a variety of scientific work and testing various technologies. If Artemis 1 returns to VAB, the cubesats’ batteries could be recharged, but it’s unclear at this stage whether such a step is necessary for any of them, Sarafin said.
Mike Wall, Space.com Spaceflight editor, contributed to this report. Email Tariq Malik at [email protected] or follow him @tariqjmalik (opens in a new tab). Follow us @Spacedotcom (opens in a new tab), Facebook (opens in a new tab) and instagram (opens in a new tab).
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