NASA announced that the start of the unmanned lunar mission Artemis, which had to be suspended this Saturday due to a technical problem, will not take place this Monday or Tuesday but later on a date to be determined early next week. “It will most likely be after the departure of the Crew-5 mission, which means in the second half of October,” the US space agency said in a message on Twitter. “Safety is at the top of the list,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, who downplayed the suspension of Saturday’s launch, saying failed attempts are part of space programs. The cancellation of the launch was due, according to NASA, to the fact that “teams found a leak of liquid hydrogen while loading the propellant in the core stage of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket”. The “multiple efforts” to solve the problem by repositioning the seal did not work, as was verified by pumping fuel back into the rocket, so “the launch director canceled the attempt scheduled for today,” the space agency said. in a message on the Artemis mission website. The objective of the first Artemis mission is to test the capabilities of the SLS and the Orion spacecraft before a manned trip to the Moon initially scheduled for 2024, which will be followed by a third in which for the first time since 1972 American astronauts will step on the lunar surface. Nelson stressed at the press conference that the mission is not going to start “until everything is fine” and that it is ruled out to do so in this launch period, whose last date is this Tuesday. The next period starts on September 19, but the most likely is the one that starts on October 17. NASA officials who accompanied Nelson at the news conference, Jim Free and Mike Sarafin, said it is still undecided whether the huge SLS rocket with the Orion spacecraft at the tip will be checked out on the launch pad or taken to the Vehicle Assembly Building at the Cape Canaveral Space Complex in Florida. The task ahead is to understand the problem that arose this Saturday and find solutions, said Mike Sarafin, manager of the Artemis mission at NASA headquarters. This Saturday was the second failed attempt to launch the rocket that will take the Orion spacecraft to orbit the Moon in a mission of 37 days, 23 hours and 53 minutes. The first was on August 29 and had to be canceled due to a failure in one of the 4 rocket engines, which measures 98 meters and cost 4,100 million dollars. This Saturday’s cancellation occurred about 3 hours before the launch window was scheduled to open, which was 2:17 p.m. local time (6:17 p.m. GMT). The mission schedule called for 2 other launch opportunities, this Monday and Tuesday, but mission managers decided it’s best to check the rocket before trying again. “We’ll go when we’re ready. This is part of the space program — get ready for a lot of failed attempts,” said NASA administrator former Sen. Bill Nelson.