Artemis (NASA moon mission)

jadebox said:
Yes, all of those other things have to be considered plus other things like the availability of people working on the program.
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Nobody's askin' for the day off.

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(Oooh... CT time, suspect the guy who skipped work today. [emoji15] )

[emoji1]
 
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NASA’s Next Launch Attempt for Artemis I Will Occur September 3

The agency announced today (Aug. 30) that it's now targeting Saturday (Sept. 3) for the launch of Artemis 1, a crucial mission whose first liftoff attempt on Monday (Aug. 29) was scuttled by a technical issue.

If all goes according to plan, Artemis 1 will launch from Pad 39B at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida during a two-hour window that opens at 2:17 p.m. EDT (1817 GMT).
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That'll be at 3:17 AM my time, so I won't try to stay up and watch it, but I hope it goes well.

As for the cause of the issue:
The Artemis 1 team couldn't troubleshoot the issue in time during Monday's countdown, so the launch attempt was called off. But Honeycutt and others on the mission team think they have a handle on it now: They suspect it boils down to a faulty temperature sensor on Engine 3.

"I think we understand the physics about how hydrogen performs, and the way the sensor is behaving doesn't line up with the physics of the situation," Honeycutt said during this evening's press conference. Readings from other sensors suggested that Engine 3 was getting appropriate levels of liquid hydrogen during the bleed, he added.

Replacing the sensor would likely require rolling the Artemis 1 stack off Pad 39B and back to KSC's enormous Vehicle Assembly Building, Honeycutt and others said during the briefing. The Artemis 1 team doesn't think that's necessary at this point and instead plans to go ahead with another launch attempt on Saturday.

The team plans to make a few adjustments to the countdown plan — start the engine-cooling process 30 to 45 minutes earlier than last time, for example, And they'll continue analyzing data and mapping out scenarios over the next few days to make sure that the current approach is indeed justified and prudent, Honeycutt said.

"We've got to continue poring over the data," he said. "We've got to put some flight rationale together, anticipating that we're not going to get any better results on that Engine 3 bleed-temp sensor."
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Well, I do hope that this approach "is indeed justified and prudent". I guess we'll find out.
 
Gotta have patience in aerospace. The mission will happen. Let’s make sure the cryogenics are going where they’re supposed to go, and not going where they’re not supposed to go.
 
Some people in Titusville are happy when a launch is postponed. We paid $40 to park there today!*

The crowds were obviously not as large as expected since the scrub was called fairly early. I didn't mind paying to park since my wife can't walk very far and the lot was close to a park. Of course, I would like to have seen the launch, but waiting at the park was fun. We saw a nice sunrise behind the SLS. A band played in the morning. Someone let us look at the rocket through a large telescope. We saw a TV news crew doing a report and one of the YouTube channels doing their show. A pair of dolphins frolicked in the water just in front of us.

*A bank let a local charity manage parking in their lot. The money collected supports the charity. We were told that they would have raised $2000 today if the lot had filled. It was more than half-filled by the time the launch was scrubbed.
 
Is there any particular name for the hangar where SpaceX assembles vehicles destined for pad 39A?
 
Artemis I's next launch attempt may not happen until later this year

Future launch periods, including those in September and October, depend on what the team decides early next week, but this results in a minimum of delays consisting of at least several weeks.

"We will not be launching in this launch period," said Jim Free, associate administrator for NASA's Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate. "We are not where we wanted to be."

Free said the stack, including the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft, has to roll back into the Vehicle Assembly Building, unless they get a waiver from the range, which is run by the US Space Force
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Better late than never - a failed launch would be a huge setback.
 
Puppycow said:
I think it's just called the vehicle assembly building.
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No, that's where SLS is and SpaceX has a launch in about a month so that would be a real mess. SpaceX is already blocking one Artemis launch window.


slyjoe said:
That is where they assembled Artemis and the original Saturns.

SpaceX has the "SpaceX Horizontal Assembly Facility" south of Pad-39A.
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Yep. That's it. Thanks.
 
I'll just say what everyone who is thinking: the rocket is fine, but we will need it to blow up an asteroid heading for earth later this year, hence the whole "malfunction" theater.
 
slyjoe said:
That is where they assembled Artemis and the original Saturns.

SpaceX has the "SpaceX Horizontal Assembly Facility" south of Pad-39A.
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RecoveringYuppy said:
No, that's where SLS is and SpaceX has a launch in about a month so that would be a real mess. SpaceX is already blocking one Artemis launch window.



Yep. That's it. Thanks.
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Sorry, I misunderstood the question. I assumed that's what you were asking about. The building where they assembled the SLS.
 
Looks like tomorrow will see a cryo-loading test to assess the repairs on the fuel line seals done last week. They'll also be doing the engine bleed and pressurization tests. Better to do all this now and reduce the chance of more surprises on the next actual launch attempt.
 
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