NASA Calls Off Artemis Launch to the Moon

On Monday, NASA called off the scheduled launch of the first rocket in its Artemis project, which aims to send astronauts back to the Moon.

The launch director “has called a scrub for the day.” An engine bleed that “couldn’t be remedied” is the cause, NASA announced a few minutes before its most powerful rocket to date was about to be launched into space.

The launch of #Artemis I is no longer happening today as teams work through an issue with an engine bleed. Teams will continue to gather data, and we will keep you posted on the timing of the next launch attempt. https://t.co/tQ0lp6Ruhv pic.twitter.com/u6Uiim2mom

— NASA (@NASA) August 29, 2022

The automated 322-foot (98-meter) Space Launch System (SLS) rocket was scheduled to be launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 8:33 am (12:33 GMT, 13:33 BST).

It would have kicked off the Artemis space program fifty years after the last Apollo mission. There is no information yet on when the technical issues will be fixed or when a new date for the rocket launch will be set.

Thousands gathered in Florida for the Artemis NASA launch

Thousands of people had gathered on Florida’s beaches to watch this launch, which had been planned for years. Vice President Kamala Harris was among them.

Hotels in the area of Cape Canaveral were completely booked with between one hundred thousand and two hundred thousand viewers.

The SLS and the Orion crew capsule that is mounted atop the rocket will be tested during the Artemis 1 mission.

The spacecraft will orbit the Moon to determine whether people will soon be safe to travel on board. Artemis will eventually see the first lunar walk by a woman and a person of color.

Bill Nelson, the NASA administrator, said on Saturday that “this mission goes with a lot of hopes and dreams of a lot of people. And we now are the Artemis generation.”

The enormous orange and white rocket had been parked on Launch Complex 39B at the space center for a week.

More than three million gallons of liquid hydrogen and oxygen were poured into the vehicle’s fuel tanks throughout Sunday and Monday.

Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, a woman, gave the final go-ahead for takeoff. Women now make up about thirty percent of the control room team compared to only one during Apollo 11.

Every second of the forty-two-day journey will be documented by cameras, which will also snap a selfie of the spaceship with the Moon and Earth in the background.

Orion Capsule Will Orbit The Moon

A record-breaking distance for a spaceship designed to carry humans, the Orion capsule will orbit the Moon, approaching within sixty miles (one hundred kilometers) thereof at its closest point before firing its engines to travel forty thousand miles further.

Testing the capsule’s heat shield, the largest ever built at sixteen feet in diameter, is one of the mission’s main goals.

The heat shield will have to endure a speed of twenty-five thousand miles per hour and a temperature of five thousand degrees Fahrenheit upon returning to the Earth’s atmosphere (2,760 degrees Celsius). It’s only half as hot as the Sun.

For the time being, crew members will be replaced by sensor-equipped dummies that will record acceleration, vibration, and radiation levels in place of actual people. Small satellites will be launched for lunar surface research.

Bhavya Lal, the associate administrator for technology, policy, and strategy at NASA said, “What we are starting with the launch Monday is not a near-term sprint, but a long-term marathon to bring the solar system and beyond into our sphere.”

The following mission, Artemis 2, will place astronauts in orbit around the Moon without touching down. In 2025 at the earliest, the Artemis 3 crew will set foot on the Moon.

Considering that humans have already been to the Moon, Artemis has its sights set on an even more ambitious objective: a crewed journey to Mars in the future.

The goal of the Artemis program is to build a base on the surface and an orbiting space station called Gateway to establish a permanent human presence on the Moon.

For a trip to Mars that would take at least a few months, Gateway would act as a staging and refueling location.