No New Date Confirmed For Artemis Launch

Crews continue to assess technical problems that scrubbed NASA's Artemis rocket launch Monday morning, and have not announced a new date for liftoff.

Even without the technical problems, weather may have gotten in the way.

The launch forecast had been favorable for 8:33 a.m. EDT lift off, but rain that would have made the launch a no-go moved in right around that time, Artemis Mission Manager Mike Serafin said in a Monday afternoon briefing. Lightning may have been an issue later in the window.

(MORE: Weather Is Key On Launch Day)Overnight, storms had delayed fueling.

Controllers had a two-hour launch window to work with. The countdown, which started Saturday morning, was halted early Monday while engineers were troubleshooting technical issues. The most challenging of those was a problem with an engine bleed. Launch controllers bleed hydrogen into the engines to get them to the right temperature for launch, but the process wasn't working properly on Engine 3.

A scrub was announced shortly after 8:30 a.m.

“This is a brand new rocket, it’s not going to fly until it’s ready,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in the afternoon briefing

Crews will continue to assess the issues before confirming a new launch date, which could come as soon as Friday.

Any given launch has a one-in-three chance of being scrubbed, 45th Weather Squadron Launch Weather Officer Melody Lovin said in an email Friday. The weather squadron, based at Patrick Space Force Base near the Kennedy Space Center, is responsible for launch-day forecasts.

About half of scrubs are due to weather, Lovin said. The rest are due to things like the technical issues that happened Monday.

There are two backup windows. The first is Friday at 12:48 p.m. EDT and the next is Labor Day, Monday, Sept. 5, at 5:12 p.m. EDT – but the weather is more of a concern on those days.

Later launch times mean more chances for afternoon storms. By Monday, the tropics could come into play, but that's uncertain.

Things looked positive earlier in the morning.

Brevard County, where the space center is located, stood up its Emergency Operations Center shortly after 5 a.m., a sign that the launch was still a go.

Crowds started packing the best viewing spots along bridges and causeways Sunday night, and traffic leading to areas closest to the space center was at a standstill before sunrise Monday.

The mission of the massive Space Launch System rocket, known as SLS for short, is to send an unmanned Orion capsule into orbit around the moon in preparation for taking humans back to the lunar surface within the next couple of years and, in the future, farther into deep space.

NASA says the SLS is its most powerful rocket ever.

Several lightning strikes hit the launchpad Saturday, but NASA test director Jeff Spalding said in a Sunday briefing that they didn't cause any damage to the rocket or systems required for liftoff. The pad is equipped with a lightning protection system consisting of three 600-foot tall towers and wires to direct lightning currents away from the rocket.

NASA's last big history-making launch was delayed due to stormy weather. SpaceX's Crew Dragon Demo 2, which launched humans from U.S. soil for the first time in nearly nine years, was set to lift off on the afternoon of May 27, 2020. But storms moved in and there was even a rare tornado warning issued for the area. The launch was called off with 17 minutes left in the countdown. The rocket took off three days later.

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