NASA Moon rocket ready for second attempt at liftoff

• NASA will try again on Saturday to get its rocket off ground and send its uncrewed test capsule toward Moon.
• Launch is scheduled for 2:17pm from Kennedy Space Centre in Florida.
• About three million litres of ultra-cold liquid hydrogen and oxygen is expected to be pumped into spacecraft.

KENNEDY SPACE CENTRE: After technical issues halted its first launch attempt, NASA will try again on Saturday to get its new 30-story rocket off the ground and send its uncrewed test capsule toward the Moon.

If the massive Space Launch System (SLS) lifts off successfully, it will be historic for NASA, marking the first of its Artemis program plotting a return to the Moon, 50 years after the final Apollo mission.

The launch is scheduled for 2:17pm (1817 GMT) from Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, with a possible two-hour delay.

“Our team is ready,” said Jeremy Parsons, deputy manager of exploration ground systems at Kennedy Space Centre, on Friday.

“They are getting better with every attempt and actually performed superbly during launch countdown number one... I think if the conditions with weather and the hardware align, we’ll absolutely go.”

Though the area around the launch site will be closed to the public, 400,000 people are expected to gather on beaches nearby to see — and hear — the most powerful vehicle that NASA has ever launched climb into space.

NASA’s initial launch attempt on Monday was halted after engineers detected a fuel leak and a sensor showed that one of the rocket’s four main engines was too hot.

Both issues have since been resolved, the launch team said.

Shortly before 06:00 am (1000 GMT), launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson gave the go-ahead to start filling the rocket’s tanks with cryogenic fuel.

About three million litres of ultra-cold liquid hydrogen and oxygen is expected to be pumped into the spacecraft.

And the weather appears to be cooperating: the US Space Force predicts a 60% chance of favourable weather at the scheduled liftoff time, growing to 80% later in the launch window.

If something requires NASA to stand down again on Saturday, there are backup opportunities on Monday or Tuesday. After that, the next launch window will not be until September 19, due to the Moon’s position.

The purpose of the Artemis 1 mission is to verify that the Orion capsule, which sits atop the SLS rocket, is safe to carry astronauts in the future.

Mannequins equipped with sensors are standing in for astronauts on the mission and will record acceleration, vibration and radiation levels.

Apollo’s twin sister

It will take several days for the spacecraft to reach the Moon, flying around 60 miles (100 kilometres) at its closest approach. The capsule will fire its engines to get to a distant retrograde orbit (DRO) of 40,000 miles beyond the Moon, a record for a spacecraft rated to carry humans.

The trip is expected to last around six weeks and one of its main objectives is to test the capsule’s heat shield, which at 16 feet in diameter is the largest ever built.

On its return to Earth’s atmosphere, the heat shield will have to withstand speeds of 25,000 miles per hour and a temperature of 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,760 degrees Celsius) — roughly half as hot as the Sun.

Artemis is named after the twin sister of the Greek god Apollo, after whom the first Moon missions were named.

Unlike the Apollo missions, which sent only white men to the Moon between 1969 and 1972, the Artemis missions will see the first person of colour and the first woman step foot on the lunar surface.

Fittingly, NASA’s first woman launch director, Blackwell-Thompson, will give the final “go” for liftoff on Saturday.

A successful Artemis 1 mission will come as a huge relief to the US space agency, after years of delays and cost overruns.

A government audit estimates the program’s cost will grow to $93 billion by 2025, with each of its first four missions clocking in at a whopping $4.1 billion per launch.

The next mission, Artemis 2, will take astronauts to the Moon without landing on its surface.

The crew of Artemis 3 is to land on the Moon in 2025 at the earliest, with later missions envisaging a lunar space station and a sustainable presence on the lunar surface.

According to NASA chief Bill Nelson, a crewed trip to the red planet aboard Orion, which would last several years, could be attempted by the end of the 2030s.