Second attempt at Artemis moon rocket launch this weekend,says NASA

Washington: NASA aims to make a second attempt on Saturday,September 3,Florida-time,to launch its new Space Launch System (SLS) moon rocket,five days after a pair of technical issues foiled an attempt on Monday,agency officials said on Tuesday.

Plans call for the 32-story-tall SLS rocket to blast off from the Kennedy Space Centre in Cape Canaveral,Florida,sending its Orion capsule on an uncrewed,six-week test flight around the moon and back to Earth.

In Sydney,that will be 4.17am AEST on Sunday morning.

The long-awaited launch would kick off the US space agency’s moon-to-Mars Artemis program,successor to the Apollo moon project of the 1960s and 1970s.

The first voyage of the SLS-Orion,a mission dubbed Artemis I,aims to put the 5.75-million-pound (2.6 million kg) vehicle through its paces in a rigorous demonstration flight pushing its design limits,before NASA deems it reliable enough to carry astronauts.

NASA’s initial Artemis I launch attempt onMonday ended with a cooling problem with one the rocket’s main-stage engines,forcing a halt to the countdown and a postponement.

At a news briefing on Tuesday,NASA officials said they hoped to have those issues resolved in time for a launch retry on Saturday.

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During Monday’s launch attempt,one of the four main engines in the rocket’s core stage could not be chilled sufficiently prior to planned ignition moments before liftoff. The three others came up just a little short.

The chilling operation will be conducted a half-hour earlier for Saturday afternoon’s try,once fuelling is underway at the pad,officials said.

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John Honeycutt,NASA’s program manager for the rocket,told reporters that the timing of this engine chill down was earlier during successful testing last year,and so moving it sooner may do the trick.

Honeycutt also questioned the integrity of one engine sensor,saying it might have provided inaccurate data Monday.

To change that sensor,he noted,would mean hauling the rocket back into the hangar,which would mean weeks of delay.

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The $4.1 billion test flight is the opening shot in NASA’s Artemis moon-exploration program,named after the twin sister of Apollo in Greek mythology. Astronauts could strap in as soon as 2024 for a lap around the moon and actually attempt a lunar landing in 2025.

Reuters,AP

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