The four astronauts preparing to end a five-decade gap in crewed lunar flights will have to wait until at least April before they can begin the Artemis II mission.
During the SLS rocket’s second wet dress rehearsal last weekend, NASA discovered an issue with the flow of helium to the rocket’s upper stage.
Engineers decided that to fix the problem, the massive rocket, which is currently on the launchpad at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, will have to be transported back to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB). That four-mile rollback to the VAB is expected to take place on Tuesday, February 24.
On Monday, NASA confirmed that as a result of the latest issue, the rocket will no longer be launching on the recently announced March 6 target date, adding that the Artemis II mission will now lift off “no earlier than April 2026.”
NASA added: “The quick work to begin preparations for rolling the rocket and spacecraft back to the VAB potentially preserves the April launch window, pending the outcome of data findings, repair efforts, and how the schedule comes to fruition in the coming days and weeks.”
The Artemis II crew members — NASA’s Victor Glover, Reid Wiseman, and Christina Koch, along with the Canadian Space Agency’s Jeremy Hansen — left quarantine on Saturday evening and remain at NASA’s facility in Houston, Texas.
NASA originally targeted February 8 for the launch, but another issue in the first wet dress rehearsal prompted a delay, with NASA then announcing March 6 as a possible launch date. But that, too, has now been disregarded, with the team currently looking to launch in April.
The much-anticipated mission will involve the crew performing detailed tests on the Orion spacecraft’s systems while flying around the moon, with a smooth journey paving the way for a crewed lunar landing in the Artemis III mission, which could take place before the end of this decade.
Interested in following the 10-day mission when it finally gets underway? NASA recently shared a fascinating video revealing exactly how the flight is expected to unfold.
After 13 suborbital test flights and more than $15 billion in development costs, SpaceX's Starship has finally reached orbit. The 407-foot megarocket, the most powerful ever built, lifted off from Starbase, Texas, on Monday and delivered its first real payload on it's 14th attempt. The celebration came with an asterisk, though, since SpaceX had to cut the planned 10-hour mission to roughly three hours.
https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/2104601695711904180
SpaceX is finally ready to give Starship its biggest test yet. The company says the massive rocket's 14th test flight is scheduled for September 22, when it will attempt to put the upper stage into Earth orbit for the first time. The launch is currently pending regulatory approval, with a 75-minute window opening at 7:15 a.m. CT.
Starship has 26 Starlink satellites to deliver
For decades, humanity has looked up at the Moon and wondered what it would be like to live on it. Think sprawling cities, factories, research centers, and permanent human settlements. Unfortunately, there is one fairly fundamental problem with that vision.
A new study published in Frontiers in Space Technologies argues that even the Moon's potentially enormous reserves of frozen water may be nowhere near enough to support city-sized populations sustainably. Researchers Martin Elvis and Jonathan McDowell estimate that the permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles could contain roughly one billion tons of water. It sounds like an extraordinary amount until you put a million thirsty humans next to it.