If all goes well, NASA’s powerful new Space Launch System could finally blast off for the first time from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center as soon as Friday, September 27.
The space agency has repaired a leak that cleared the Sept. 3 launch and is now working to prove that the problem is resolved with a propellant loading demonstration before Sept. 21 to be ready for a try of release on the 27th.
“Over the weekend, Artemis I crews completed repair work in the area of a hydrogen leak,” NASA said Monday. “The demonstration will allow teams to confirm that the hydrogen leak has been repaired, evaluate updated propellant loading procedures designed to reduce pressure-related and thermal stress on the system, conduct a start-up bleed test, and evaluate prepressurization procedures.”
The space agency also needs special permission from the US Space Force, which oversees rocket launches from Florida. NASA must recheck the batteries in the SLS rocket’s flight termination system, which destroys the rocket if it goes astray to avoid a threat to the public. This has to happen every 25 days, and September 27 is outside that window.
The problem for NASA is that checking the batteries requires taxiing SLS to the Vehicle Assembly Building, or VAB. That could add several days to the process, and SLS is only certified to make the trip from its hangar to the launch pad so many times, according to Ars Technica’s Eric Berger.
“So if they went back to VAB this month and then to the block, they’d only have one round trip left,” Berger wrote on Twitter.
All of which means that Artemis I mission directors would rather fix the propellant leak, pass a tank test, and walk away with the blessing of the Space Force without having to move the rocket at all.
During a press call Thursday, Jim Free, NASA’s associate administrator for exploration systems development, confirmed that the agency has requested a waiver from the Space Force that would allow SLS to remain.
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If the waiver is granted and the tank demo goes well, the launch could move forward to September 27th with a possible October 2nd reserve date.
The long-awaited debut of SLS, the Orion crew capsule and the first major mission of the Artemis program was scrubbed twice before, first on August 29 due to engine problems and then on September 3 due to leak.
The mission will see SLS send an unmanned Orion on a weeks-long flight around the far side of the moon and back for a high-speed re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere followed by a splash landing .
Artemis 1 is designed to pave the way for the first manned Orion mission in 2024 and eventually for the return of NASA astronauts to the surface of the Moon and then to Mars in the 2030s.
The 70-minute launch window on Sept. 27 opens at 8:37 a.m. PDT, with Orion returning to Earth on Nov. 5.
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