“We have convinced ourselves without a shadow of a doubt that we have good-quality liquid hydrogen going through the engines,” John Honeycutt, Artemis programme manager, told a pre-launch press briefing. With barely three hours until the launch window opens, efforts to troubleshoot the issue were running into time pressure, and fuel system managers recommended a scrub.īy late morning, only 11% of liquid hydrogen had been loaded, while 100% of liquid oxygen had already been tanked.Įarlier this week, mission managers at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida had called off Monday’s liftoff with 40 minutes left on the countdown clock when a sensor indicated one of four RS-25 engines on the core stage of the mega Space Launch System (SLS) rocket was not cooling properly.Ī review found the problem was a faulty sensor, not a failure of the cooling system or engine itself, and the launch team has said it will be ignored if it malfunctions again during fuelling for Saturday’s planned attempt at 2.17pm EDT (7.17pm BST). Officials said three separate attempts to plug the leak, including warming fuel supply lines to try to create a plug, were unsuccessful. Nasa halted the operation, while engineers scrambled to plug what was believed to be a gap around a seal. But minutes later, hydrogen fuel began leaking from the engine section at the bottom of the rocket. No damage occurred and the effort resumed, Nasa’s Launch Control reported. But as the sun rose, an over-pressure alarm sounded and the tanking operation was briefly halted.
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