NASA

NASA's new moon rocket sprang another hazardous leak Saturday, as the launch team began fueling it for liftoff on a test flight that must go well before ...

The launch team planned to ignore the faulty sensor this time around and rely on other instruments to ensure each main engine was properly chilled. If not, the resulting damage could lead to an abrupt engine shutdown and aborted flight. On Monday, hydrogen fuel escaped from elsewhere in the rocket. People last walked on the moon 50 years ago. NASA wants to send the crew capsule atop the rocket around the moon, pushing it to the limit before astronauts get on the next flight. But minutes later, hydrogen fuel began leaking from the engine section at the bottom of the rocket.

It was not immediately clear if space agency will be able to make fixes in time to meet next backup launch date of Monday.

Officials said they had identified that problem as a faulty sensor rather than an issue with the cooling system or engine itself. “This is part of the space business,” he said. It was the second time in five days that technical issues had kept the spacecraft on the launchpad. [postponement of the first launch attempt](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/aug/29/artemis-scrubbed-nasa-cancels-moon-launch-engine) last Monday. [Space](https://www.theguardian.com/science/space) Center waited until late in the countdown to scrub the liftoff after the failure of several workarounds to try to plug the leak of liquid hydrogen as it was being pumped into the core stage of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. [Nasa](https://www.theguardian.com/science/nasa) officials said the next attempt would be delayed until at least the end of September.

Following the Artemis I launch scrub Saturday from Launch Complex 39B at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the agency will hold a media briefing no ...

For the second time in five days, NASA halts a countdown in progress and postpones a planned attempt to launch the debut test flight of its giant, ...

SLS has been under development for more than a decade, with years of delays and cost overruns. Many experts, however, believe that time frame is likely to slip by a few years. But NASA officials have yet to make that call.

NASA's new moon rocket sprang another dangerous fuel leak, forcing launch controllers to call off their second attempt this week.

The launch team planned to ignore the faulty sensor this time around and rely on other instruments to ensure each main engine was properly chilled. The new moon rocket uses the same type of main engines. During Monday’s attempt, a series of small hydrogen leaks popped up there and elsewhere on the rocket. Ground controllers tried to plug it the way they handled previous, smaller leaks: stopping and restarting the flow of super-cold liquid hydrogen in hopes of closing the gap around a seal in the supply line. If the six-week demo succeeds, astronauts could fly around the moon in 2024 and land on it in 2025. After the latest setback, mission managers decided to haul the rocket off the pad and into the hangar for further repairs and system updates.

The flight termination system is required on all rockets to protect public safety. During today's launch attempt, engineers saw a leak in a cavity between the ...

While the rocket remained safe and it is too early to tell whether the bump in pressurization contributed to the cause of the leaky seal, engineers are examining the issue. During today’s launch attempt, engineers saw a leak in a cavity between the ground side and rocket side plates surrounding an 8-inch line used to fill and drain liquid hydrogen from the SLS rocket. While in an early phase of hydrogen loading operations called chilldown, when launch controllers cool down the lines and propulsion system prior to flowing super cold liquid hydrogen into the rocket’s tank at minus 423 degrees F, an inadvertent command was sent that temporarily raised the pressure in the system.

SLS rocket springs another fuel leak, forcing NASA controllers to call off a second bid to send a crew capsule into lunar orbit. NASA's next-generation moon ...

A lot of people made a special effort to come here just to see the launch,” he said. But Apollo, born of the US-Soviet space race during the Cold War, was less science-driven than Artemis. Local authorities had expected enormous crowds because of the long Labor Day holiday weekend. “It’s a real disappointment for the thousands of people who came to this part of Florida to watch a lunar launch on the space coast … NASA Administrator Bill Nelson stressed that safety is the top priority, especially on a test flight like this where everyone wants to verify the rocket’s systems “before we put four humans up on the top of it”. Officials said the leak was too tricky and time-consuming to finish troubleshooting and fix on the launch pad before the current launch period allotted to the mission expires on Tuesday.

The Space Launch System rocket with an Orion capsule is seen behind American flags. An engine issue halted the first attempt to launch Artemis 1 mission. A fuel ...

NASA has postponed the launch of its next-generation moon rocket in Cape Canaveral, Florida, due to an engine-cooling problem. "Multiple troubleshooting efforts to address the area of the leak... The crew of Artemis 3 is to land on the Moon in 2025 at the earliest, with later missions envisaging a lunar space station and a sustainable presence on the lunar surface. We will not be launching in this launch period," said Jim Free, associate administrator for Exploration Systems Development at NASA. The purpose of the Artemis 1 mission is to verify that the Orion capsule, which sits atop the SLS rocket, is safe to carry astronauts in the future. The rocket was poised to launch its long-awaited debut test flight around the moon, which would have been the first lunar mission in 50 years, when a problem was detected in one of the main engines.

A fuel leak that thwarted NASA's second attempt to launch its new Artemis 1 moon rocket on Saturday (Sept. 3) will likely take weeks to fix.

Follow us [@Spacedotcom](http://twitter.com/spacedotcom) (opens in new tab), Analyses soon traced that issue to a faulty temperature sensor, and the team decided to [push ahead with another try on Saturday](https://www.space.com/artemis-1-moon-mission-launch-september-3). It's unclear at the moment if the mission team plans to seek such a waiver. Ten tiny cubesats are flying on Artemis 1, to conduct a variety of science work and test various technologies. The leak occurred after a brief "inadvertent" overpressurization of the fuel line that was three times the acceptable pressure, said Mike Sarafin, NASA's Artemis 1 mission manager. But they stressed that calling off the launch today was the right move, as did NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, who also participated in the briefing. The Saturday 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 core booster to fuel it for launch. — A fuel leak that thwarted NASA's second attempt to launch its new Artemis 1 moon rocket on Saturday (Sept. One thing is clear, however: The quick disconnect's soft seal gasket will likely have to be replaced. The leak led to levels of flammable hydrogen gas near the rocket that were several times higher than the acceptable range, he added. 3) will likely take weeks to fix, and may even force the megarocket off its launch pad, space agency officials said. Despite three separate tries to fix the leak, engineers weren't able to stem it and ultimately stood down to assess the situation further.

After technical difficulties disrupted NASA's Artemis I mission twice, its Space Launch System (SLS) rocket will not launch this week.

The termination system is part of the rocket that the NASA had 20 days in which to launch the rocket before it would have to be rolled back in order to test the batteries in the rocket’s flight termination system. Speaking soon after the second launch scrub on Saturday, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said if the SLS rolls back into the VAB for repairs, the next launch attempt would most likely happen in mid to late October, after a planned crew mission to the International Space Station takes off earlier that month. The rocket was set to launch an uncrewed capsule called Orion on a mission called Artemis I. As noted by Sarafin, if NASA stayed on the pad, they could test the system at cryogenic temperatures, which would give them a better idea of how it would behave during a real launch. The announcement comes after two scrubbed launch attempts of the massive rocket, and will likely result in a delay of several weeks.