By Joey Roulette
– NASA’s new $4 billion moon rocket endured high winds and heavy rain early Thursday as it blasted off from Hurricane Nicole on its Florida launch pad, apparently with minor damage, according to an initial inspection from NASA after the storm.
Sustained winds of 85 miles per hour (136.8 km per hour) were measured by launch site sensors hundreds of feet above the ground, with gusts exceeding 100 mph, testing the rocket’s design limits of 32 stories high and posing additional risks to a spacecraft already beset by technical glitches that have delayed its debut launch.
NASA wind sensor readings are available to the public by the US National Weather Service online. The rocket is designed to withstand launch pad exposure to winds of up to 85 mph, US space agency officials said before the storm.
In a brief message posted on Twitter by NASA Associate Administrator Jim Free, the agency acknowledged readings from 60-foot-tall wind sensors of gusts reaching a maximum of 82 mph.
The National Hurricane Center in Miami reported Nicole’s maximum sustained winds on land at 75 mph, with higher gusts, when it made landfall before dawn Thursday south of the Kennedy Space Center launch site in Cape Canaveral
Instead of trying to roll the huge Space Launch System (SLS) rocket into its hangar before the hurricane hit, NASA had opted to crash the vehicle on the launch pad where it arrived last week before the emergence of Nicole in the forecast as a tropical storm. .
The SLS and its Orion capsule were preparing for a third launch attempt, after two aborted countdowns in late summer, that would mark its long-awaited first flight and the inaugural mission of the lunar exploration program NASA’s Artemis.
NASA engineers reasoned that trying to transport the massive rocket, a 12-hour undertaking, in strong winds as the storm approached was too risky.
“Camera inspections show very minor damage, including loose putty and tears in weather decks,” Free, who oversees much of the agency’s Artemis program, tweeted Thursday afternoon. “The team will conduct additional on-site inspections of the vehicle soon.”
NASA launched SLS onto its launch pad last Thursday for a liftoff scheduled for Nov. 14, with the goal of making a long-delayed debut test flight to the Moon without a human on board.
“Even at that time, there was always a concern that somewhere in the Caribbean would be a favored area for at least some tropical system development,” said Mark Burger, launch weather officer with the 45th Weather Squadron from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. .
“Of course there was nothing at the time, so you can only go with the probabilistic aspect,” he added.
Nicole took shape as a potential tropical storm when the SLS arrived at the pad, about 4 miles from where it had been stored at NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building. NASA on Tuesday pushed back the rocket’s target launch date to Nov. 16, when weather officials predicted Nicole would become a hurricane.
A NASA spokesman said Thursday that the agency has not ruled out a Nov. 16 launch, but added, “It’s premature to confirm a launch date while we’re just starting to take personnel out for walk-through inspections.”