Humanity’s long-awaited return to the moon has been delayed – again – by NASA.
The American space agency revealed this morning that a fuel leak happened during the trial run of its Artemis II mission.
It added on X: ‘To allow teams to review data and conduct a second wet dress rehearsal, NASA will now target March as the earliest possible launch opportunity for the Artemis II mission.’
Yesterday, engineers filled the rocket’s propellant tanks with liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen.
NASA said the ‘wet dress rehearsal’ was to identify any hiccups that could occur when filling up the rocket’s tanks.
The first trip to our lunar neighbour in 53 years was meant to happen ‘no earlier’ than February 6.
But it was pushed back by two days when bad weather meant the fuelling test run couldn’t happen.
The agency’s administrator, Jared Isaacman, said it was T-minus five minutes when the launch was stopped.
He added: ‘Additional factors included extended Orion closeout work, intermittent ground audio dropouts, and cold-weather impacts to some cameras, along with the successful demonstration of updated Orion closeout purge procedures to support safe crew operations.
‘As always, safety remains our top priority for our astronauts, our workforce, our systems, and the public. As noted above, we will only launch when we believe we are as ready to undertake this historic mission.’
The crew will consist of three NASA astronauts – Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch – and one Canadian astronaut, Jeremy Hansen.
Artemis II will see a giant rocket shove the Orion space capsule into the stars for a 10-day lap around the moon.
The capsule won’t land on the moon itself and will return to Earth with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.
NASA does have an ulterior motive to finally put humans back (or near, rather) the moon – the mission will test a new life-support system.
Humans will finally set foot on the grey, dusty surface in 2028 for the Artemis III mission.
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