The long-awaited NASA Artemis II mission, which was supposed to return people to the Moon for the first time in more than half a century, has been postponed until at least March. The reason for the delay was a hydrogen fuel leak detected during a critical dress rehearsal at the Kennedy Space Center launch pad in Florida. This was reported by AP, writes UNN.
Details
The technical malfunction occurred during the fueling of the giant Space Launch System (SLS) rocket with supercooled liquid hydrogen and oxygen. Engineers detected a leak at the fuel line connection, which caused the automatic system to stop the countdown at 5 minutes and 15 seconds. This is the same problem that plagued the rocket during its debut test three years ago, as hydrogen is an extremely volatile and flammable molecule.
In fact, it caught us off guard
He explained the difficulty of working with this type of fuel: "When you're dealing with hydrogen, it's a small molecule. It's high energy, and we like it for that reason, and we do our best."
Schedule change and crew safety
Due to the incident, four astronauts – three Americans and one Canadian – were temporarily removed from quarantine. The delay until March will allow specialists to study the data in detail, replace seals, and conduct another full dress rehearsal of refueling before authorizing a manned flight.
Previously, NASA planned to launch this week, but crew safety remains a priority. Currently, officials are not naming an exact date for the repeat test, noting that it is necessary to completely eliminate the risks of repeated leaks at the complex rocket interface.