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NASA was compelled to finish a essential fueling take a look at of its large Artemis 2 rocket early within the wee hours of Tuesday, delaying its mission to launch astronauts across the moon by a minimum of a month. Now {that a} new day has dawned on the massive orange launch car, the area company is trying to shed some gentle on what precisely went improper — and a number of what it is saying sounds acquainted.
The fueling testfor NASA’s Artemis 2 Space Launch System (SLS) rocket started late Saturday (Jan. 31), and ran till Tuesday morning. Called a “wet dress rehearsal,” it is a take a look at to place the SLS launch car and floor groups by a simulated countdown clock to totally power-on and gas the rocket with the greater than 700,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen it must get off the bottom.
If that sounds acquainted, it is as a result of the Artemis 1 SLS skilled hydrogen leaks in the identical location throughout its moist costume rehearsal three years in the past. Those leaks resulted in three separate rollbacks to NASA’s cavernous Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) over the course of six months earlier than Artemis 1 would lastly launch.
Artemis 1 launched in November 2022 and flew an uncrewed Orion spacecraft on a month-long mission to lunar orbit and again.
With Artemis 2, NASA will take a look at Orion’s capacity to maintain astronauts in deep area. NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, will trip aboard Orion on a 10-day mission across the far facet of the moon. The flight will qualify the spacecraft’s programs for Artemis 3, which NASA is planning because the mission to land astronauts again on the lunar floor.
“We really did learn a lot from the Artemis 1 mission, and we implemented a lot of the lessons learned yesterday through wet dress,” Lori Glaze, NASA’s Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate performing affiliate administrator, stated throughout a post-wet costume rehearsal press convention on Tuesday.
“Everyone’s aware of some of the challenges with the hydrogen tanking from Artemis 1, and we’ve made some changes,” Glaze stated.
To NASA’s credit score, the Artemis 2 moist costume rehearsal went far smoother than Artemis 1’s first fueling take a look at.
Despite the hours of troubleshooting the persistent hydrogen leak — which NASA officers say was stabilized inside acceptable limits (however by no means eradicated) —mission operators managed to totally gas each SLS phases and carry the take a look at right down to the simulated clock’s terminal depend (the final 10 minutes earlier than liftoff). But the staff did not fairly get as near T-0 as wanted to be able to earn NASA’s gold stamp of approval to launch with a crew onboard.
“The fact that we got to full tanking yesterday on the first try was a tremendous success, and we gathered an enormous amount of data in the processes and how we want to go forward with that in the future,” Glaze stated.
At T-5 minutes 15 seconds, the SLS floor launch sequencer terminated the depend on account of a spike in the identical fast disconnect hydrogen leak it had skilled all afternoon, which was trigger to abort the take a look at, NASA stated.
“As we began that pressurization, we did see that the leak within the cavity came up pretty quick,” Artemis Launch Director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson stated throughout Tuesday’s press briefing, referring to a cavity on the rocket’s mast umbilical. The exercise triggered security procedures already in place for such contingencies, she added.
“We got into our safety steps. We saw the hydrogen concentration come down and then later in the evening, we got into our drain operation,” she stated.
While sustaining the moist costume rehearsal an total success when it comes to knowledge gathered and the accolade of filling SLS’s tanks on the primary strive, Blackwell-Thompson additionally assured that, in contrast to Artemis 1, the hydrogen hiccups can possible be addressed on the pad, and do not appear to warrant a rollback to the VAB for upkeep.
“During Artemis 1, we found out that we can do some work on these plates at the pad,” Blackwell-Thompson stated. “I had hoped that we would not have to demonstrate that again for Artemis 2, but we showed that we can go do this work at the pad and be ready for launch.”
As for why SLS remains to be experiencing these similar hydrogen leaks after three years between missions, NASA officers have some theories, however have not fairly nailed down a definitive trigger. “These are very bespoke components,” NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya stated Tuesday, describing every SLS as its personal distinctive car to study and perceive.
The leaky seal may probably be a results of vibrations incurred in the course of the rocket’s preliminary rollout to the pad,, Kshatriya stated. It took the Artemis 2 SLS rocket almost 12 hours to make the 4-mile journey to the pad from the VAB at a high pace of 1 mile an hour final month.
“That rollout environment is very complicated,” he added, noting that the Artemis 1 SLS was put by completely different acceleration exams on its manner between the VAB and the pad at Launch Complex-39B particularly to assist decide the impact of such stresses on the rocket and launch platform. “We think that’s a contributor. But again, we have to tear the seal apart and see what happened.”
“This is the first time this particular machine has borne witness to cryogens. And how it breathes, and how it vents, and how it wants to leak is something we have to characterize,” Kshatriya stated, and testing earlier than the launch pad can solely go to this point.
Even with an “aggressive approach” to coping with hydrogen leaks throughout Artemis 1, “we’re pretty limited as to how much realism we can put into the test,” stated John Honeycutt, the chair of NASA’s Artemis Mission Management staff. “We try to test like we fly, but this interface is a very complex interface, and when you’re dealing with hydrogen, it’s a small molecule, it’s highly energetic,” he stated, admitting he and mission managers weren’t anticipating these points to crop up once more.
“This one caught us off guard,” Honeycutt added. “The initial things that we were seeing in the technical team felt like we either had some sort of misalignment or some sort of deformation or debris on the seal.”
With the conclusion of the moist costume rehearsal right this moment, we’re shifting off the February launch window and concentrating on March for the earliest doable launch of Artemis II.With greater than three years between SLS launches, we totally anticipated encountering challenges. That is exactly…February 3, 2026
NASA wants to judge the rocket and floor infrastructure on the pad earlier than figuring out the following doable date to aim one other moist costume rehearsal, and has opted to forgo Artemis 2’s February launch alternative, which, had the take a look at gone efficiently, spanned from Feb. 8-11.
“With more than three years between SLS launches, we fully anticipated encountering challenges,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in a post on X early Tuesday. “That is precisely why we conduct a wet dress rehearsal. These tests are designed to surface issues before flight and set up launch day with the highest probability of success.”
Mission managers at the moment are concentrating on subsequent month’s window, which is open March 6-9 and March 11, with about 5 days out there across the first week of every month thereafter.
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https://www.space.com/space-exploration/artemis/nasa-had-3-years-to-fix-fuel-leaks-on-its-artemis-moon-rocket-why-are-they-still-happening
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