NASA again delays the launch of its rocket to the moon

The US space agency announced on Monday, September 12 that the launch of NASA’s massive new rocket to the moon, which has already been aborted twice due to technical problems, will not take place before September 27. This highly anticipated test flight of the Artemis 1 mission, with no crew on board, should test the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket in real conditions and the Orion capsule at its summit, where future astronauts will run.

To get the green light, NASA teams must successfully perform a fuel tank fill test and obtain a special waiver to avoid retesting batteries on an emergency missile destruction system. If the agency does not receive this waiver, the rocket will have to return to the assembly building, which will delay the schedule by several weeks. The shooting window will open on September 27 at 11:37 a.m. local time for 70 minutes, with the mission ending on November 5. A possible second window is scheduled for October 2, NASA said in a blog post.

Last week, NASA said it hopes to be able to launch the SLS on September 23 or 27. The launch of the rocket was canceled on Monday, August 29, and then again on Saturday, September 3, due to technical problems, a setback that delays the actual launch of the American return to the moon program, Artemis.

Farther than any other habitable ship so far

The orange and white SLS missile, which has never flown before, has been in development for more than a decade. Fifty years after the last Apollo mission, Artemis 1 should make it possible to verify that the Orion capsule, located on top of the rocket, is safe to transport astronauts to the moon in the future.

In this first mission, Orion will venture up to 64,000 kilometers behind the Moon, farther than any other habitable spacecraft to date. The main objective is to test the heat shield, the largest shield ever built. Returning to the Earth’s atmosphere, it will have to withstand a speed of 40,000 km / h and a temperature half the temperature of the surface of the Sun.