The Artemis Moon Mission in a six-week uncrewed voyage.
New Delhi:
NASA today called off the test flight of its giant Moon rocket 'Artemis 1' because of a leak in one of the four RS-25 engines. The six-week uncrewed mission aims to go around the moon and back 50 years after Apollo's last lunar mission.
Here is why the launch of Artemis was called off today:
- A problem was detected on one of the rocket's main engines, RS-25, 40 minutes before the scheduled liftoff from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
- NASA said that they first noticed the 'engine bleed' when the launch team began filling the rocket's core fuel tanks with super-cooled liquid oxygen and hydrogen propellants.
- The four engines are used during the rocket's core stage and needed to be "conditioned" with cryogenic propellant to bring them up to the correct temperature for launch.
- One of these engines did not achieve the high-accuracy temperature as NASA expected it to.
- The rocket is currently in a stable configuration and will now attempt to take off on September 2.
