Reuters 
Joe Skipper and Steve Gorman

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CAPE CANAVERAL — Ground teams at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida began a final full day of launch preparations Friday on the eve of a second attempt to send NASA’s giant, next-generation moon rocket on its first test flight, five days after averting technical problems a initial effort. Mission managers were still “go” for a Saturday afternoon liftoff of the 32-story Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion space capsule to launch NASA’s Artemis moon-to-Mars program, successor to the Apollo lunar missions half a century ago, NASA officials said.

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Tests conducted Thursday night showed that technicians appeared to have repaired a leaking fuel line that contributed to NASA’s decision to halt the initial launch operation on Monday, Jeremy Parsons, deputy program manager at the space agency, told reporters on Friday centre. Two other key issues with the rocket itself — a faulty engine temperature sensor and some cracks in the insulation foam — have been largely resolved, Artemis mission manager Mike Sarafin told reporters Thursday night. Melody Lovin, the US space force’s launch weather officer at Cape Canaveral, said forecasts call for a 70 percent chance of favorable conditions during Saturday’s two-hour launch window, which opens at 2:17 p.m. EDT (1817 GMT), as well as for a backup start time on Monday.

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“The weather continues to be very good for the launch attempt on Saturday,” Lovin said. “I don’t expect the weather to be the best way for either launch window.” However, he added, the odds of clearing a launch each day for weather or any reason were about one in three. The mission, named Artemis I, marks the first voyage for both the SLS rocket and the Orion capsule, built under NASA contracts with Boeing Co and Lockheed Martin Corp, respectively. SLS is set to launch Orion around the Moon and return on a 37-day, uncrewed test flight designed to put both vehicles through their paces before flying astronauts on a follow-up mission targeted in 2024. If the first two Artemis missions are successful, NASA aims to land astronauts back on the Moon, including the first woman to set foot on the lunar surface, as early as 2025, although many experts believe that timeframe is likely to slip by a little bit. years.

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Twelve astronauts walked on the moon during six Apollo missions from 1969 to 1972, the only space flights that have yet placed humans on the lunar surface. Apollo grew out of the Cold War-era US-Soviet space race, while NASA’s renewed lunar focus is more science-driven and includes international partnerships with the space agencies of Europe, Japan and Canada, and with commercial rocket companies such as SpaceX . Unlike Apollo, the latest lunar missions aim to establish a long-term, sustainable base of operations on the lunar surface and in lunar orbit as a stepping stone to eventual human missions to Mars. NASA’s first step is to take off with SLS, the largest new vertical launch system the US space agency has built since the Apollo-era Saturn V rocket.

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If the Artemis I mission is delayed again for any reason, NASA could try again on either Monday or Tuesday. After that, regulations limiting the amount of time a rocket can remain in its launch tower would likely require the spacecraft to return to its assembly building before another liftoff attempt, Parsons said. Such a move would involve a delay longer than a few days or a week. SLS and Orion have been in development for more than a decade, with years of delays and costs that totaled at least $37 billion as of last year. But the Artemis program has also created tens of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in trade for the aerospace industry, according to NASA. (Reporting by Joe Skipper in Cape Canaveral, Fla., and Steve Gorman in Los Angeles. Additional reporting by Joey Roulette in Palm Beach, Fla.; Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)

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