After months of tests, troubleshooting and repairs, engineers fueled the Space Launch System moon rocket for blastoff Monday on NASA’s long-overdue Artemis 1 test flight — a mission to send an unpiloted Orion crew capsule on a 42-day mission beyond the moon and back. But after working through a weather delay, a brief hydrogen leak, trouble cooling one of the rocket’s four main engines, and problems with a balky valve, managers called off the countdown.
“The combination of not being able to get engine three chilled down and then the vent valve issue that they saw … caused us to pause today,” said mission manager Mike Sarafin. “The team was tired at the end of the day, and we just decided that it was best to knock it off and to reconvene tomorrow.”
Even if the technical problems could have been resolved, “we would have been no-go for weather at the beginning of the (launch) window due to precipitation,” he said, “and later in the window, we would have been no-go for lightning.”
While it’s not yet known what will be needed to resolve the engine cooling issue and the vent valve problem, the team is preserving the option of making another…….
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Rising Dough
What is the cost to NASA by scrubbing the launch? How critical is the launch’s success to the manufacturers of the Artemis 1, and why?
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The scrubbing of the launch can make NASA look bad as a company and it could make the people trust them less as they could keep doing it. The launch success can be critical to the manufacturers because of pay and trustability because they would probably get paid for making the rocket fully working and it would make the manufacturers also look as if they cannot be trusted to make the working rocket.
I think for NASA this delay may give people second thoughts on whether or not they want to invest in coming to NASA and see another launch. For the manufacturers I think this launch is critical due to the amount of viewers that there could be for this launch, and if it does not work those people could possible stop viewing or coming to see NASA launches/projects.
I think that delaying the launch helps and hurts the economy because of the news or media outlets gain attention because everyone wants to watch the launch. but on the other hand hotel businesses can be hurt because people are not staying at the hotel as long.
I think delaying the launch hurts how much money they make because they have to pay to set it back up and less people will come out to watch because they only got a hotel for a certain amount of time. The launch success could be crucial because it builds trust in taking things in to space
Hopefully this gives them the boost and knowledge to prevent other delays and even stop the situation from happening again making the space launches faster and maybe even cheaper
The cost to NASA by scrubbing the launch is critical because it costed a lot a money and time in preparation just for them to not launch. The launch’s success to the manufacturers of the Artemis 1 is critical because for them to manufacture more rockets, they need to have some successful launches without any failures.