NASA has delayed the launch of an rocket designed, built, and tested in Alabama on a mission around the moon. The four astronauts’ upcoming trip is being postponed because of near-freezing temperatures expected at the launch site. The first Artemis moonshot with a crew is now targeted for no earlier than Feb. 8, two days later than planned. NASA was all set to conduct a fueling test of the 322-foot moon rocket on Saturday, but called everything off because of the expected cold.
Ironically, it was forty years ago this week when a manager at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center heard warnings from engineers about the possible impact of overnight cold weather on the twin booster rockets of space shuttle Challenger. Those concerns didn’t delay the launch, the spacecraft exploded moments after liftoff, and the seven astronauts. APR News chronicled Alabama’s role in the arguments before the Challenger accident, forty years later.
The critical dress rehearsal for Artemis-2 is now set for Monday, weather permitting. The change leaves NASA with only three days in February to send four astronauts around the moon and back, before slipping into March.
"Any additional delays would result in a day for day change," NASA said in a statement Friday.
Heaters are keeping the Orion capsule warm atop the rocket, officials said, and rocket-purging systems are also being adapted to the cold. Commander Reid Wiseman and his crew remain in quarantine in Houston and their arrival at Kennedy Space Center in Florida is uncertain. NASA has only a handful of days any given month to launch its first lunar crew in more than half a century. Apollo 17 closed out that storied moon exploration program in 1972.
Complicating matters is the need to launch a fresh crew to the International Space Station as soon as possible, a mission accelerated because of the last crew's early return for medical reasons. The moonshot will take priority if it can get off by Feb. 11, the last possible launch date for the month, mission managers said Friday.
If that happens, the next station crew will have to wait until the Artemis astronauts are back on Earth before launching later in the month.
“It couldn’t be cooler that they’re in quarantine and we’re in quarantine, and we’re trying to launch two rockets roughly around the same time,” NASA astronaut Jack Hathaway, part of the next station crew, said Friday. “It’s a pretty exciting time to be part of NASA.”
