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NASA will conduct an important fueling test of its Artemis 1 lunar rocket today (September 21), which you can watch live.
Technicians are set to begin loading ultra-cooled hydrogen and liquid oxygen thrusters at Artemis 1’s space launch system (SLS) megarocket today at 7:15am EST (1115 GMT). Watch it live here on Space.com, courtesy of NASA, or live via the space agency.
Artemis 1 The SLS will be used to launch the Orion capsule on an uncrewed flight to lunar orbit and back from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The test flight was supposed to take off late last month but was delayed twice due to glitches, the second being a liquid hydrogen leak which occurred during the period leading up to the planned September 3 takeoff.
Related: NASA’s Artemis 1 Moon Mission: Live Updates
more: NASA’s Artemis 1 moon mission explained in pictures
Artemis Team 1 Replacement of two seals At the site of the leak, a “quick disconnect” connects the SLS core stage to a fuel line from the moving launch tower. Today’s test will help determine whether this repair was successful or not. If all goes well, the mission will still be on track to launch on September 27, with a backup opportunity on October 2.
It is unclear how long today’s testing will last; in Friday update (Opens in a new tab) (September 16), NASA officials wrote that “it will end when the test goals are achieved.”
Refueling testing is not the only procedure that is done in spaceflight today. A Russian Soyuz rocket is set to launch cosmonauts Sergei Prokopyev and Dmitry Petlin and NASA astronaut Frank Rubio toward the International Space Station From Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 9:54 AM EDT (1354 GMT). You can watch it here on Space.com too when the time is right.
Artemis 1 is NASA’s first mission Artemis The program, which aims to establish a long-term human presence around it the moon By the end of 2020. If all goes well with Artemis 1, Artemis 2 will launch astronauts on a trip around the moon in 2024, and Artemis 3 will land near the south pole of the moon in a year or two.
Mike Wall is the author of “Abroad (Opens in a new tab)Book (Great Grand Publishing House, 2018; illustrated by Carl Tate), a book about the search for an alien life. Follow him on Twitter Tweet embed (Opens in a new tab). Follow us on Twitter Tweet embed (Opens in a new tab) or on Facebook (Opens in a new tab).
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