If we learned something with Artemis I in 2022 is that liquid hydrogen is possibly the biggest enemy of NASA’s patience in its missions. And in the last few hours the US space agency has confirmed what many of us feared after a difficult weekend: the launch of Artemis IIthe mission that must take astronauts around the Moon, officially delayed until March.
An accumulation of errors. These days NASA had on its agenda to do a ‘general rehearsal’ for the launch of this new mission that aims to test its equipment to take the final leap: put man on Mars in the future.
And everything seemed to be ready, with the astronauts in strict quarantine since January 23. But in the end, Florida’s weather reminded us again that it reigns supreme with freezing temperatures and strong winds that forced these plans to stop.
Some specific limits. A priori, these adverse conditions should not be a problem for cutting-edge operation, but the reality is that the SLS rocket has very strict operating limits: it cannot safely load fuel if the temperature drops below 4.4ºC for more than 30 minutes. Something that eliminated the launch window that It was scheduled between February 6 and 7moving hope to February 8.
The coup de grace. But if the weather was already a big problem, in the last few hours the last major inconvenience has arrived while retrying to refuel under more favorable conditions.
It was none other than a leak of liquid hydrogen that was detected at the umbilical interface of the rear service mast while the test was being carried out. Something that has forced everything that was being done to stop, and logically to make decisions that are very hard.
Safety first. Although the agency managed to complete many of the test objectives, the hydrogen concentration exceeded safety limits, forcing the rocket to be drained. Administrator Jared Isaacman has been blunt– Crew and vehicle safety is the top priority, so no launch window will be forced.
A ‘dejà vu’. For fans of the Artemis show, this sounds painfully familiar. The situation is almost a carbon copy of what was experienced with Artemis I in 2022and although at that time it was not the weather, there were recurring technical failures such as propellant leaks and problems with the pressure fans that caused multiple cancellations of the general rehearsal.
Because of those technical problems, they were forced to return the rocket to the Vehicle Assembly Building for much more thorough checks, pushing the April launch to the end of August. Now the similarity lies in the complexity of liquid hydrogen, an ultracold and extremely difficult to contain fuel that remains the Achilles heel of these missions.
What will happen now? For now, with all these problems behind us, the launch window that lasted until February 11 has been completely ruled out. This forces us to look for a new date that NASA aims for sometime in March 2026although without specifying a specific day. To do this, they must still analyze data and above all have a successful general rehearsal to validate the safety of the operation.
As far as the astronauts are concerned, it no longer makes sense for them to remain quarantined at the Kennedy Space Center, so they will return to Houston until there is a new firm launch date.
Images | POT
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