NASA announces new target launch date for Artemis - WESH 2 Orlando

BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. —

NASA announced Wednesday that they volition rotation the Artemis I SLS satellite rocket backmost retired to the pad for different motorboat effort adjacent month.

First, it was a rocket motor sensor, past a hydrogen leak and past came Hurricane Ian. But present NASA is moving guardant for the adjacent motorboat effort connected Nov. 14 conscionable aft midnight.

The SLS stack was rolled backmost into the Vehicle Assembly Building earlier Ian slammed the Cape and that gave motorboat teams clip to screen their bases.

“It’s going to beryllium astir different period earlier we truly bash the launch. So precise important to complaint up the batteries and marque definite everything is acceptable to spell beyond the leak issues they’ve had,” said Don Platt of Florida Tech.

The rocket has been stacked for implicit a twelvemonth and had been connected pad 39B for astir 7 weeks.

As this is the archetypal clip the SLS rocket stack volition fly, determination won’t beryllium astronauts connected board. But determination volition beryllium mannequins with sensors to observe the interaction of the forces and environment.

NASA engineers are assured that the issues that kept the SLS stack connected the crushed are fixed and that minimal enactment is needed to get it flight-ready.

But dissimilar erstwhile motorboat attempts, this adjacent 1 volition beryllium astatine nighttime which is not perfect arsenic NASA wants to presumption each space of this first-time SLS launch.

“They astir apt did a risk-benefit investigation and decided that launching astatine night–and doing it now, successful November–was much important than the nonaccomplishment of immoderate camera information they mightiness have,” Platt said.

NASA officials said that the 322-foot rocket volition rotation backmost retired nary earlier than Nov. 4.

“I deliberation it’ll beryllium absorbing if they invitation the vice president down this time. That’ll springiness america immoderate denotation of their assurance heading into this adjacent attempt,” Eric Berger of Ars Technica said.

If the SLS performs and the countdown goes arsenic planned connected Nov. 14, the ngo volition past 25 days. This is shorter than the 40-plus time ngo if it launched successful earlier attempts.

And if the SLS rocket does not motorboat connected Nov. 14, determination are 2 backup dates connected Nov. 16 and 19.