NASA says Artemis 1 will not launch on or before Sept. 6 following 2nd launch attempt | FULL - Video

NASA's Artemis I mission was postponed once more due to fuel leaks following its highly-anticipated second launch attempt at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida on Saturday, after its first was scrubbed due to an engine-cooling problem on Monday.

Launch controllers were forced to call off their second attempt to send a crew capsule into lunar orbit with test dummies, after the new moon rocket sprang another dangerous fuel leak hours before it was set to launch. The first attempt earlier in the week was also marred by escaping hydrogen, but those leaks were elsewhere on the 98-meter rocket, the most powerful ever built by NASA.

Jim Free, director of exploration systems development mission, revealed they will not launch on or before Sept. 6. “We do not launch until we think its right,” Free said.

Launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson and her team tried to plug Saturday’s leak the way they did the last time: stopping and restarting the flow of super-cold liquid hydrogen in hopes of removing the gap around a seal in the supply line. They tried that twice, in fact, and also flushed helium through the line. But the leak persisted and Blackwell-Thompson finally halted the countdown after three to four hours of efforts.

Artemis — years behind schedule and billions over budget — aims to establish a sustained human presence on the moon, with crews eventually spending weeks at a time there. It’s considered a training ground for Mars and would be the first integrated test of NASA’s Orion spacecraft, Space Launch System (SLS) rocket.

For more info, please go to https://globalnews.ca/news/9090659/artemis-space-mission-moon-mars/

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