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Watch NASA’s Artemis Moon Rocket Roll Out to the Launchpad


The Space Launch System and Orion are two of the core components of NASA’s plan to return astronauts to the lunar surface in the coming years. Getting there requires a rocket powerful enough to propel a large spacecraft out of low-Earth orbit to the moon, some 240,000 miles away. Orion is a capsule designed to carry astronauts on space voyages lasting up to several weeks.

NASA first put the SLS rocket on the launch pad in mid-March. In early April, it attempted to conduct a “wet maneuver” of countdown procedures, which included loading more than 700,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen rocket launchers. However, technical problems, including a hydrogen leak during three drills, cut short the countdown.

NASA then rolled the rocket back to the Vehicle Assembly Building for repairs. In June, the rocket returned to the launch pad for another attempt at a wetsuit maneuver. That effort, on June 20, encountered another hydrogen leak, in the fuel line connector to the rocket’s booster stage. For the first time, however, the propellant containers were filled and the operators were able to continue the maneuver until the countdown ended with 29 seconds remaining. Initially, the aim was for the countdown to stop at just under 10 seconds, when the engine actually started up.

Despite the leak, NASA officials decided that all the critical systems had been fully tested and declared the test successful. The rocket returned to the Vehicle Assembly Building again for final preparations, which included the installation of a flight termination system, which would detonate the missile in the event of a failure during flight. launch process and eliminate the possibility of crashing into a densely populated area.

The end-of-flight system battery, installed on August 11, is usually only rated for 20 days, but the part of the US Space Force that oversees launches from Florida has grant NASA an exemption to extend this period to 25 days. This allows for a launch date of August 29 as well as fallback opportunities of September 2 and September 5.

NASA hopes it has fixed the hydrogen leak, but won’t know for sure until the August 29 countdown, when the propellant stream is cooled down to extremely cold temperatures, something that can’t be tested in the future. Vehicle assembly building.



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