NASA Eyes New Launch Dates For Its Giant Moon Rocket

For the past 23 days, the Space Launch System (SLS) moon rocket has been more monument than machine, standing 32-stories tall on launch pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center, the most conspicuous object for miles around as it towers over the flat Florida landscape. On Aug. 29 and again on Sept. 3, the rocket was supposed to take off on an uncrewed mission around the moon—kicking off NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to have Americans back on the lunar surface by 2026. Both launches came to nothing as serial technical glitches kept the engines quiet and the hardware motionless. But engineers are hardly giving up. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] As NASA reports, work is taking place out at the pad that could see the SLS at last take off in one of two upcoming launch windows: on Sept. 23, during a two-hour stretch beginning at 6:47 a.m. ET; or on Sept. 27, during a 70-minute period that starts at 11:37 a.m. ET. It is during those two time frames that the moon will be in a favorable position to make the planned mission possible. First, though, come the repairs. The biggest challenge the engineers face is fixing leaks that have formed around two fuel lines that feed liquid hydrogen to the rocket. The first leak involves an 8 in. (20 cm) wide cable that is used for filling the SLS’s massive tanks. The second involves one of four 4 in. (10 cm) cables that cool the rocket’s main stage engines, conditioning them to the proper temperature so that the...
Source: TIME: Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Uncategorized healthscienceclimate Space Source Type: news
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