This article was updated on August 31, 2022.
It would have been too nice if it had worked right away on the first try. At 2:34 p.m. German time on August 29th – i.e. shortly after the planned launch date – NASA announced that the first launch attempt of the Artemis I mission had to be aborted. The reason is a problem with one of the engines. So far, the engineers have not been able to bring engine number 3 into the right temperature range for takeoff.
The second attempt to launch the Orion space capsule is now scheduled to take place on September 3, 2022 from 8:17 p.m. German time. The two-hour launch window is based on the Moon’s position in its orbit around Earth. The next possible date would then be September 5th again. In order to avoid another technical problem, the Artemis team wants to cool down the engines 30 to 45 minutes earlier than before.
Artemis-I is the test run of the new giant rocket “Space Launch System”, or SLS for short, which is not supposed to carry people up to the moon again until 2025 at the earliest, including for the first time a woman and a non-white person. The rocket weighs 2,600 tons and is fueled with more than three million liters of hydrogen. The program is named after the goddess Artemis, Apollo’s twin sister, who lent his name to the legendary Apollo missions of the 1960s and 1970s. It is the first time in 50 years that a spaceship has set off for our satellite – albeit without people on board. The only things in the capsule are measuring dolls and plush versions of Snoopy and Shaun the Sheep.