No kidding: NASA eyes an April 1 target for Artemis II’s Moon mission, but the path there is more deliberate than it sounds.
NASA has fixed the issue that forced the Artemis II rocket to be pulled off its launch pad last month. Yet it will take a couple of weeks before officials feel ready to roll the vehicle back into its launch-ready position at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The towering 322-foot-tall Space Launch System rocket could have been set to launch as early as this week, following a successful key fueling test on February 21. During that test, NASA loaded the rocket with super-cold propellants and didn’t encounter the major hydrogen-leak problem that had blocked the mission’s February start.
But a fresh snag appeared just a day after that fueling milestone. Ground teams could not flow helium into the rocket’s upper stage. Unlike the core-stage connections, which can be addressed at the launch pad, the helium lines to the upper stage sit high up and are only accessible inside Kennedy’s Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB).
Mission managers therefore decided to roll the rocket back to the VAB for further troubleshooting. The vehicle returned to the assembly building on February 25, and within a week engineers pinpointed the helium-flow problem. NASA explained that a seal in the quick-disconnect, which channels helium from ground systems into the rocket, was blocking the pathway.
Sealing the deal
“The team removed the quick disconnect, reassembled the system, and began validating the upper-stage repairs by running a reduced flow rate of helium to ensure the fix worked,” NASA stated in an update issued Tuesday. “Engineers are also examining what caused the seal to become dislodged to prevent a recurrence.”
