The SLS rocket which must take off towards the Moon had to be sheltered earlier this week at the Kennedy space center in Florida, due to the passage of Hurricane Ian. It has not undergone damage.
Le Monde with AFP
We will still have to wait. NASA said Friday, September 30, that it would once again try to take off its mega-fusée towards the moon in November, without yet announced a precise date for this very delayed launch of the Artémis-1 mission.
The American space agency has announced to prepare for the “takeoff of Artemis 1 over the shooting period opening on November 12 and ending on November 27”. “In the coming days”, managers “will identify a specific date for the next take-off attempt”, added NASA in a blog article.
Officials had so far refused to completely close the door to a faster attempt in October. But the SLS rocket, the most powerful ever built by the American space agency, had to be returned earlier this week in its assembly building, in the Kennedy space center, in order to be sheltered from Hurricane Ian, who devastated certain regions of Florida. The rocket has undergone “no damage”, reassured the space agency.
But “concentrating efforts” on the November shooting period will allow NASA employees to “take care of their families and their homes after the storm”, she said.
Two attempts, two failures
Before bringing out the rocket on its shooting step, the teams will first have to carry out numerous checks, and in particular change or recharge the batteries of certain elements.
NASA has already carried out two attempts to take off from this rocket, at the end of August then in early September, but they both had to be canceled at the last moment because of technical problems. In development for more than a decade, SLS has never stolen.
Artemis is the new flagship program of NASA, which should ultimately allow humans to return to the moon, and take the first woman and the first person in color.
Fifty years after the last mission of the Apollo program, the Mission Artemis-1, it will not take astronaut on board. It must be used to check that the Orion capsule, at the top of the rocket, is sure to transport a crew in the future.