NASA Delays New Moon Rocket Debut Test Launch

NASA postponed the inaugural test launch of a new moon rocketship by at least four days due to an engine-cooling problem.

NASA has declined to set a specific date for relaunching the mission dubbed Artemis I, officials said a second launch attempt might happen as soon as Friday, pending more data analysis.

“If engineers can fix the launch pad issue in 48 to 72 hours, Friday is in play,” said Michael Sarafin, NASA’s Artemis mission manager.

The planned mission is the first for NASA’s moon-to-Mars Artemis program, the successor to the Apollo lunar missions of the 1960s and ’70s, using the Space Launch Vehicle (SLS) rocket and Orion human capsule.

The uncrewed Orion capsule will fly around the moon and splash in the Pacific after six weeks.

The malfunction on Monday surfaced as the rocket’s fuel tanks were being filled with super-cooled liquid oxygen and hydrogen propellants at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

NASA reported one of the four main SLS engines didn’t cool as expected during “conditioning.” Two minutes after launch, the flight was cancelled.

Late-hour launch postponements are routine in the space sector, so Monday was not a significant setback for NASA or its contractors, Boeing Co (BA.N) for SLS and Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N) for Orion.

After a scrubbed launch, NASA head Bill Nelson said, “We don’t launch until it’s right. This is a very complicated machine, a very complicated system, and all those things have to work. And you don’t want to light the candle until it’s ready to go.”