The stars seemed to be gradually aligning for the liftoff of NASA’s new rocket to the moon on Saturday, thanks to encouraging weather forecasts and the resolution of technical problems that caused the launch to be postponed earlier this week.
Liftoff is scheduled for 8:17 p.m. French time from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, but remains possible for the next two hours if necessary. The chance of favorable weather during this shooting window is 60%.
“The weather looks good” and it should not be “blocking”, assured this Thursday during a press conference Melody Lovin, in charge of analyzing the weather forecast.
A faulty sensor and a leak are identified
NASA has also been working since Monday to solve the technical problems that caused the launch to be canceled at the last moment.
The first referred to the cooling of one of the four main engines, an operation necessary before starting it. By letting some of the cryogenic fuel escape in the engines, they gradually reach the desired low temperature. But the data collected indicated a problem with one of them.
Engineers “performed independent analysis that confirmed it was a faulty sensor,” said John Honeycutt, the rocket’s program manager, during a news conference on Thursday. In the future, this sensor will simply be ignored.
Second problem solved: a leak that had been observed on Monday when filling the fuel tanks.
“We were able to find what we believe to be the source of the leak and fix it,” said launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson.
A test rocket in orbit on the Moon
The Artemis 1 mission is a test flight without an astronaut on board. This will be the first liftoff of the SLS rocket, which has been in development for more than a decade to become the most powerful in the world.
“There’s no guarantee we’ll get off the ground on Saturday, but we’ll try,” mission lead Mike Sarafin said modestly.
If it does launch on that day, the Orion capsule on top of the rocket will spend almost 38 days in space. It will go into orbit around the Moon after approaching its surface only about 100 km away.
It is on this ship that astronauts will be located in the future, including the first woman and the first person of color to walk on the Moon, in 2025 at the earliest.
The Artemis program, named after Apollo’s twin sister, has been NASA’s flagship new program for many years. On the Moon, the space agency wants to test the technologies needed to send the first humans to Mars.
Source: BFM TV
