NASA’s Artemis launch still going ahead as Storm Nicole set for hurricane upgrade

September’s extreme weather accounted for the latest in a series of unfortunate delays that have beset the Artemis I mission, with NASA having already made two attempts at getting the SLS to launch — the first on August 29 and the second on September 3.

The initial launch attempt was scrubbed after it appeared one of the rocket’s four main engines was too hot during engine bleed tests.

This issue, however, was later traced to a misleading reading from a “bad sensor”. A persistent leak in the liquid hydrogen fuel line, meanwhile, brought the second go to a halt, despite engineers trying three times to troubleshoot the problem.

Both of these issues were reexamined in mid-September when NASA undertook a “cryogenic demonstration test”, which saw a practice tanking of the SLS’s core and interim stages with more than 730.000 gallons of liquid hydrogen fuel.

The space agency reported that “after encountering a hydrogen leak early in the loading process, engineers were able to troubleshoot the issue and proceed with the planned activities.”

These activities included revisiting the kick-start bleed test — in which a small amount of liquid hydrogen fuel is used to cool down the four RS-25 engines at the base of the rocket’s core stage to 423F (217C) — that threw up problems during the first launch attempt.

The purpose of this was to ensure that the engines are not unduly stressed when the supercool fuel is channelled into them properly at the time of launch.

Article source: https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1693943/nasa-artemis-launch-tropical-storm-nicole-hurricane-florida-sls-kennedy