NASA is delaying the Artemis II mission launch to March so crews have time to study and fix the leak in the rocket’s hydrogen system.
The United States’ National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is postponing the Artemis II Moon mission launch to March after a fuel leak during a final test of all pre-launch procedures.
NASA's Artemis II mission will send four astronauts on a daring journey around the Moon without docking, before returning to Earth's atmosphere at a record speed of approximately 25,000 miles per hour (40,000 km/h). The Artemis mission would be the first to bring humans towards the Moon since the last mission in the 1970s.
On Monday, NASA’s engineering teams did a “wet dress rehearsal” to determine how the system worked ahead of the first launch, which included fuelling the rocket with 700,000 gallons of super-cold liquid propellant.
During the preparations, engineers spent several hours troubleshooting a leak in the rocket's liquid hydrogen system, according to a statement from the agency.
Teams had to take pauses to warm the rocket’s hardware to stop the flow of hydrogen, which set them back on their 49-hour countdown to finish the dress rehearsal.
The wet dress rehearsal was stopped with five minutes left because the leak had worsened, according to NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman.
There were other issues with the testing, Isaacman said, including some problems with a valve on the Orion spacecraft, audio issues, and cold-related camera problems.
“We fully anticipated encountering challenges,” Isaacman wrote on social media platform X.
“That is precisely why we conduct a wet dress rehearsal,” noting that the test is done to bring up issues before flight and to set up a launch day with “the highest probability of success”.
Pushing the new launch to March will give NASA teams some time to review and solve the problems that surfaced during the wet dress rehearsal, according to a statement from the agency.
NASA will then conduct another wet dress rehearsal before scheduling a March launch date, Isaacman added.
The initial planning for the Artemis II mission had potential launch dates scheduled until April, with one window from March 6-11 and another for April 1-6.
The Artemis II mission has been delayed several times, with the first launch date expected for the end of 2024.
The mission was then pushed back by a year to September 2025 due to technical issues with the Orion’s heat shield and life support system, according to trade publication Space News.
A few months later, the NASA administration pushed the Artemis II mission again to April 2026 to continue working on the issues with the Orion craft.
Last March, trade publication America Space claimed that NASA was looking to accelerate the planned launch date to February 2026, which the agency later confirmed.
Monday’s wet dress rehearsal was also delayed due to near-freezing temperatures at the launch site at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
