“Artemis I” start postponed: Stopped 20 minutes before the start

Artemis I: Now NASA wants to go back there. Before that becomes reality, the rocket must be tested. And today there was a setback.

The disappointment is likely to be great: 20 minutes before the planned start, NASA canceled the “Artemis I” mission. As the countdown approached, engineers faced technical difficulties. Main problem: The third of the four engines could not be flooded with liquid hydrogen. But this is necessary in order to be able to ignite at all.

NASA boss Bill Nelson – himself a former astronaut – was contrite in NASA’s own stream:

“It’s a very complicated machine, a very complicated system, and all of these things have to work. And you don’t want to light the candle before it’s ready to go.”

Unmanned test flight

“Artemis I” was planned as a test flight, i.e. as an unmanned mission. Both the newly developed rocket with the name SLS and the newly developed “Orion” space capsule should have been checked down to the smallest detail. The capsule is to remain in space for 42 days and orbit the moon in an ellipse – at the closest point to the moon only 100 kilometers from its surface, at the furthest point more than 6000 kilometers.

“Orion” was co-developed by the European Space Agency ESA. This is intended to secure a moon flight ticket for a future European astronaut from ESA.

How does the human body react?

What should therefore also be tested: How does the flight affect the human body? There are dummy dolls on board the test flight. The first black woman in space, Mae Jamison, explained on CNN what exactly is being tested: Measurements would be taken on the dolls. They would be tested for radiation or whether they have control over navigation: “This is really a test flight in every respect. The logistics of getting to this point were important and these logistics of a rocket launch were also important.”

People should go to the moon

The tests are important because the next step in the “Artemis” mission is to send people to the moon again after 50 years. A woman will also be on board for the first time. The “Artemis II” mission was planned in about three years.

In the first step, however, the test flight must first start successfully. A possible new date could be September 2nd. Whether this deadline can be met depends on how quickly the repair work on the rocket takes place.

It is not uncommon for technical problems to occur during launch attempts. When NASA first attempted to launch the Space Shuttle in 1981, the flight was aborted during the countdown. It then started two days later.

Nasa boss warns of Chinese moon plans
New images of Jupiter are ‘amazing’