Nasa may roll back Artemis II rocket launch after helium flow discovery | US news

NASA said in a blog post on Saturday that it was taking steps to potentially reverse the launch of the Artemis II rocket after the discovery of an intermittent helium flow.

The agency said it was taking steps to return the Artemis II rocket and Orion spacecraft to the vehicle assembly building at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

“This will almost certainly impact the March launch window,” NASA said.

The agency observed an intermittent helium flow during the transient cryogenic thrust stage of the space launch system rocket overnight. Launch requires a helium flow.

NASA announced on Friday that it is aiming to launch four astronauts around the moon and back on March 6 as part of the Artemis II mission, after successfully completing the fuel test that caused it to be shut down earlier this month.

The Artemis II mission’s four astronauts, three Americans (Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch) and one Canadian, Jeremy Hansen, were entering a second quarantine period Friday in anticipation of the new target launch date, which NASA announced “with caveats” because it said there was still a lot of prep work to do after Thursday’s fuel test.

NASA has several dates in early March to launch Artemis, which will make a 10-day journey around the moon but will not land. The flight will take humans to a never-before-seen distance in space, and according to NASA, the mission will fly approximately 4,700 miles (7,600 km) beyond the far side of the moon, surpassing the distance record set by Apollo 13 in 1970. The mission will test systems for future deep space exploration.

The mission is in preparation for Artemis III, planned for 2028, which will be the first human landing on the moon since the last Apollo program flight in December 1972.

Richard Luscombe contributed reporting