The Space Launch System and its infrastructure were ultimately not sufficiently ready for takeoff. After three tries countdown under real conditions, the American agency decided to bring it back to its assembly building. Nothing unexpected, but the schedule will be pushed back.
Don’t panic, but still a lot of work…
Step by step…
This is the prerogative of new launchers, and their new launch areas too. Although the Space Launch System (SLS) has taken a number of design elements from the STS shuttles, the 98m-tall rocket is fundamentally new, and this was its first trip to the LC-39b, equipped for its future take-off. The teams therefore expected a multitude of unpleasant little problems and… They were served. On each of the three major attempts to run the WDR test (Wet Dress Rehearsala countdown simulated in real conditions, stopped hopefully 9 seconds before takeoff), NASA had to stop the process for the time to identify leaks and error messages from this gigantic system.
Problem with the launch site helium pipes, hydrogen leak on the refueling boxes at the foot of the rocket, defective pressurization valve on the second stage of SLS… Technical glitches that the test was precisely intended to reveal (and in this, it is a success), and that the teams will be able to erase in the weeks to come.
Take time for repairs
On Saturday evening, NASA announced to everyone’s surprise that it was going to bring its giant launcher back under the protection of its assembly building (the VAB) while it did some work on the launch site… Time for which it will benefit to settle the details on the rocket itself. This is not a decision to be taken lightly: it takes more than a day to bring SLS back to its hangar with its tracked vehicle, which mobilizes several dozen workers.
Above all, the overall schedule is modified. The agency cannot announce that it passed the countdown test successfully: with 49% full on the oxygen tank and 5% on the hydrogen tank, there were still many steps left. These are all details that can also be corrected on future copies, but are there still some hidden defects? There are therefore also difficult decisions to be made after the repairs…
What schedule for 2022?
So, return to the site and take the time to pass the simulated countdown test, or prepare the launcher for its future takeoff and test the countdown in a real situation? In any case, the launch scheduled for June (the date was not precisely fixed) does not already seem more realistic. As always, the SLS project will need more time…
But patience, in this kind of disproportionate project, is rather a quality: after more than a decade of work, NASA and the manufacturers of the Space Launch System cannot afford a failure for the Artemis 1 campaign. The stakes are colossal , and political support still fragile. We will therefore have to wait to learn more about a possibility of take-off to the Moon this summer or in the fall.
Source : space flight now
3