Rollout of NASA’s new moon rocket to launch pad delayed at least a month

By Steve Gorman

(Reuters) – The extremely anticipated rollout of NASA’s massive new moon rocket to its launch pad in Florida for last exams earlier than a primary flight has been delayed by at the least a month, till March on the earliest, the U.S. area company mentioned on Wednesday.

NASA, which late final 12 months had focused liftoff this month for its uncrewed Artemis 1 mission across the moon and again, declined to set a revised launch date, however the delay would preclude a flight earlier than April.

At a briefing for reporters, NASA executives mentioned there have been no particular, main difficulties slowing their schedule, however fairly a higher-than-usual quantity of technical hurdles to clear in making ready a big, advanced rocket system for its very first launch.

“It’s actually what I might name a form of punch checklist of a complete bunch of issues that we completely want to complete up after which we’ll be able to roll the automobile out,” mentioned Tom Whitmeyer, a deputy affiliate NASA administrator.

NASA officers mentioned workforce and provide disruptions associated to the latest Omicron-driven surge in COVID-19 infections additionally had been components in slowing down the work.

At stake is the mixed destiny of NASA’s heavy-lift House Launch System (SLS) rocket and the Orion crew capsule it would ship aloft for the Artemis program, geared toward returning people to the moon and ultimately establishing a long-term lunar colony as a precursor to sending astronauts to Mars.

The U.S. Apollo program despatched six astronauts to the lunar floor between 1969 and 1972, the one crewed spaceflights but to realize that feat.

In November, NASA introduced that it might purpose to realize the primary crewed lunar touchdown of Artemis, named for the dual sister of Apollo in Greek mythology, as early as 2025.

However the area company has a number of spaceflight stepping stones to satisfy earlier than it will get there, beginning with a profitable maiden flight of the SLS and Orion, now within the last phases of pre-launch preparations.

Rollout of the towering spacecraft, a key milestone marking the general public’s first glimpse of the newly assembled, 36-story-tall rocket-and-capsule automobile as it’s moved, had just lately been deliberate for mid-February.

Underneath the up to date timeframe outlined on Wednesday, the SLS-Orion can be trundled out on a large crawler-transporter in March – most likely across the center of the month – from its meeting constructing to Launch Pad 39-B at NASA’s Kennedy House Heart in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

As soon as there, it would take about two weeks for technicians to prepared the launch automobile for a “moist gown rehearsal” that features totally loading the rocket’s gas tanks with propellant and working by way of a simulated countdown.

Afterward, NASA will roll the SLS-Orion stack again into the meeting constructing for a final spherical of checks earlier than formally setting a brand new goal liftoff date.

In a press release on Wednesday, NASA mentioned it was reviewing launch home windows in April and Could, however the timeline may slip additional relying on the result of the gown rehearsal, area company officers mentioned.

(Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Modifying by Cynthia Osterman)