Final full day of launch preparations on the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket ended on Friday.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Ground teams at Kennedy Space Center prepared on Saturday for a second try at launching NASA’s towering, next-generation moon rocket on its debut flight, hoping to have remedied engineering problems that foiled the initial countdown five days earlier.
Tests indicated technicians have since fixed a leaky fuel line that contributed to Monday’s canceled launch, Jeremy Parsons, a deputy program manager at the space center, told reporters on Friday. If the countdown clock were halted again, NASA could reschedule another launch attempt for Monday or Tuesday.Dubbed Artemis I, the mission marks the first flight for both the SLS rocket and the Orion capsule, built under NASA contracts with Boeing Co BA.N and Lockheed Martin Corp LMT.N, respectively.
Twelve astronauts walked on the moon during six Apollo missions from 1969 to 1972, the only spaceflights yet to place humans on the lunar surface. But Apollo, born of the U.S.-Soviet space race during the Cold War, was less science-driven than Artemis. If the mission succeeds, a crewed Artemis II flight around the moon and back could come as early as 2024, to be followed within a few more years with the program’s first lunar landing of astronauts, one of them a woman, with Artemis III.
Although no humans will be aboard, Orion will be carrying a simulated crew of three – one male and two female mannequins – fitted with sensors to measure radiation levels and other stresses that real-life astronauts would experience.
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