NASA tries again this Saturday to launch the ‘Artemis I’ mission, the mega rocket to the Moon – laSexta

Published: Friday, September 02, 2022 11:52 NASA will try again on Saturday from Cape Canaveral, on the east coast of Florida (USA), to launch the unmanned mission Artemis I into space to the Moon after having suspended the takeoff last Monday due to a technical problem. “We are ready for the takeoff of Artemis!” They have communicated from NASA. The “window” of the new launch opens from 14:17 US Eastern Time (18:17 GMT), as announced by those in charge of the space program. In a teleconference, Mike Sarafin, director of the Artemis I, confirmed that after carefully studying what happened, it was determined that the main failure had to do with the adequate temperature that the engine must have at takeoff, after hydrogen loading. liquid. In this way, one of the four RS-25 engines of the powerful SLS rocket designed for this mission could not reach the proper temperature range required for the engine to start at liftoff. On Monday, technicians unsuccessfully tried a series of correctives until they were finally forced to suspend the launch. “We agreed on what was called option one, which was to operationally change the charging procedure and start cooling our engine earlier,” said Mike Sarafin. According to information from NASA on its Twitter account, the Artemis I assembly, which includes the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the Orion spacecraft, continues today on launch pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center, in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Monday’s suspension was a setback for a mission that some media have estimated at 4,000 million dollars, and which marked the full-fledged debut of the SLS rocket, 98 meters high (more than the statue of liberty in New York) and the most powerful built to date, thanks to its four RS-25 engines and two attached boosters. Objective of the mission The objective of the mission is to make a round trip to the Moon and seeks to test the capabilities of the SLS rocket and the Orion capsule. The Artemis I also wants to calibrate the capabilities of the Orion ship, which can fit up to four crew members, and with water and oxygen reserves that would allow it about 20 days of independent travel. If the new attempt fails on Saturday, there is another backup opportunity for the Artemis I mission to take off on September 5, the program directors detailed. The keys to the mission The journalist Josep Corbella has detailed in Al Rojo Vivo the keys to ‘Artemis I’. “If everything goes well on this mission, the next step will be a first mission with astronauts, which could be in May 2024 and in orbit around the Moon. Then, the following year, there could be this mission in which the astronauts could walk on the lunar surface”, explained Corbella. You can see it again in the video that you will find under these lines.