Pure launch Artemis 1

“We don’t shoot until we think he’s right,” Nelson said. “Our teams worked on this and that [scrubbing] It’s their finding…Safety is at the top of the list.”

Free said the launch won’t come on Monday or Tuesday, but should be later, likely in late September or October. Late September will likely be less likely due to conflicts with SpaceX Crew 5.

“We don’t take these tests lightly,” Frey said. “We were sure to come today, but we won’t take off until we’re ready.”

Sarafin stated that the major hydrogen leak occurred when crews transitioned from “slow fill” to “rapid fill”.

He said the teams tried three times to resolve the leak, but were unsuccessful. He added that the size of the leak created a flammability hazard and that the hydrogen was volatile.

Sarafin said engineers had discussed various options, but none of them would have allowed launch before the end of the launch period on Sept. 6.

Officials confirmed that the missile would need to be returned to the VAB because the batteries needed to be changed.

Nelson stated that this currently poses no risk to the schedule of future Artemis missions: Artemis II is still scheduled for 2024 and Artemis III is still scheduled for 2025.

“Two peels cost a lot less than a failure,” Nelson said.

Watch below: NASA update after Saturday’s Scrub Artemis 1

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The second launch attempt for Artemis 1 from the Kennedy Space Center on Saturday was unsuccessful.

According to NASA, a hydrogen leak was detected in the supply side of the 8-inch quick disconnect while trying to transfer fuel to the rocket.

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The hydrogen leak was discovered around 7 am and several different tactics were tried to address the problem.

Launch manager Charlie Blackwell Thompson and her team attempted to plug a leak on Saturday by stopping and re-flowing supercooled liquid hydrogen in hopes of clearing the gap around the seal in the supply line. They’ve tried it twice, in fact, and they’ve also washed helium through the line. But the leak continued.

Finally, the engineers told the officials that their recommendation was that the launch should be deleted. Blackwell Thompson finally stopped the countdown after three to four hours of futile effort, around 11:15 a.m.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson who was on hand for launch said, “We’ll go when it’s ready. We’re not going until then and especially now on a test flight because we’re going to be endurance testing and testing this heat shield and making sure it’s healthy before we put four humans on top of it.”

The official added that the scrubs are part of the space program. NASA rockets are complex vehicles, but especially with the SLS where all of these systems are working together for the first time.

Hydrogen leakage was one of the issues that came up with Monday’s launch attempt.

“When you use liquid hydrogen as a fuel for fuel,” said Phil Metzger of the University of California, Florida Aerospace Institute.

So as we push forward with more attempts to launch Artemis I, NASA engineers may have to deal with more hydrogen leaks on the SLS.

Another issue that halted the launch on Monday was a sensor reading saying the engine wasn’t cool enough.

“We had some sensors that didn’t tell us what we thought we were going to do and we did the right thing by standing up to the uncertainty on Monday, but we did make sure we had good flow through those motors. We know we can cool those motors. We’re ready to go forward in this way. We’ve done the analysis and the teams are ready to support the launch attempts on Saturday,” Jon Blevins, SLS chief engineer, said earlier in the week.

When launched, the rocket will launch without astronauts, orbiting the moon before returning to Earth. The flight paves the way for future launches that will send astronauts to the moon and beyond.