The second launch attempt of the Artemis I mission, the first step in a program to restore manned trips to the Moon, was scheduled for next Saturday (September 3) between 7:17 p.m. and 9:17 p.m. from mainland Portugal, NASA announced two days after the first attempt failed.
Engine cooling was not tested in tests conducted in June, NASA confirmed. “This is something they wanted to try during the fourth rehearsal, but they couldn’t. This was the first opportunity for the team to see this in action live. Obtaining this temperature is a particularly complicated matter.according to the engineers,” NASA spokesman Derrol Nail said.
The first window of opportunity was Monday, but the mission had to be aborted due to the overheating of one of the four rocket engines — the new Space Launch System (SLS) — and a leak of liquid hydrogen, that is, the aircraft’s fuel.
There was already a new window of opportunity this Friday afternoon, but only 90 minutes. NASA chose to choose the third possible date for the launch, September 3, because although it did not have all the ideal conditions for the start of the mission, has a longer time frame: two hours.
John Honeycutt, manager of the US space agency’s rocket program, admitted that the problems experienced on August 29 may reappear on Saturdaybut NASA believes that it is better to try again “than scratching our heads wondering if everything is okay or not.”
“Based on what I heard from the technical team today, what we have to do is continue analyzing the data and to improve the reasoning of our flight plan,” he said, quoted by The Guardian. One of the culprits could simply be a sensor that is transmitting the wrong information.
The search for a launch date depends on several factors: the position of the Moon in orbit around the Earth, the position of the Sun along the path of the Orion spacecraft and at the time of re-entry; and the position of the Earth in its rotation. First, because the upper stage of the rocket has to perform a maneuver at a specific point to catapult the spacecraft on a trajectory that allows it to make a distant orbit on the Moon.
So why the ship Orion can’t go more than 90 minutes without sunlight, since the functioning and maintaining the ideal temperature of the capsule depends on it. And the re-entry into the atmosphere at the end of the mission also has to happen at a specific time, to ensure that the spacecraft lands in the Pacific Ocean, exactly at the agreed place and during the day, to facilitate the recovery of Orion.
Source: Observadora
