The rocket, the most powerful ever designed by NASA, was returned Monday night to its hangar at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, to protect it from the cyclone, which is expected to hit this state in the southeastern United States on Wednesday.
The next possible liftoff periods, determined by the positions of the Earth and the Moon, run from October 17 to 31, and then from November 12 to 27.
“We know that the soonest possible is the end of October, but the most likely is that we will do it in the middle of November,” NASA chief Bill Nelson told CNN.
NASA associate administrator Jim Free had already said at a news conference on Monday that “I don’t want to say (October) is off the table, but it’s going to be tough.”
After the passage of the hurricane, NASA will have to take time to change the batteries of the rocket’s self-destruct system, a complex operation that will be carried out in the assembly building.
It will then need to lift the 98-meter-high rocket and transport it to its launch pad, before setting it up for liftoff, a maneuver that will also take days.
This setback again postpones the liftoff of the long-awaited Artemis 1 mission.
Two launch attempts have already been canceled at the last minute, one in late August and the other in early September, both due to technical problems, including a fuel leak during the filling of the rocket’s tanks.
Fifty years after the last mission of the Apollo program, Artemis 1 will seek to verify that the Orion capsule, on top of the rocket, is safe to transport humans to the Moon in the future.
The entrance “Difficult” for a rocket that was going to the Moon to take off before November, says NASA was first published in diary TODAY.
