Weather turned out to be the biggest constraint for the launch after overcoming issues with hydrogen leaks and securing a waiver for the rocket’s flight termination system.Īt the Sept. “NASA is grateful to its agency partners at NOAA, United State Space Force and the National Hurricane Center for giving us the highest quality products to protect our nation’s flight test to return us to the Moon,” the agency stated. In a statement after the briefing, NASA appeared to do some damage control. “I wish we were better at predicting weather absolutely five days in advance,” he added, noting that if he could, “I would pretty much quit this job to go work for the weather bureau.” “It’s very early in, and some of the traces we see go in different directions and go at different speeds.” It’s Tropical Depression Number Nine,” said Tom Whitmeyer, deputy associate administrator for common exploration systems development at NASA Headquarters. “Ultimately we have a pretty robust vehicle, and we’ll just have to keep looking at that forecast to see if we fall within our certified parameters.”Īgency officials seems curiously dismissive of the threat posed by the storm, which at the time of the briefing was still an unnamed tropical depression but forecast to strengthen significantly in the coming days. “We do have a certified design with factors of safety to those peak gusts,” said John Blevins, SLS chief engineer. “Right now, we don’t have a forecast that shows winds gusting higher than 74 knots coming across the Kennedy Space Center,” he said. 2, while rolling the vehicle back to the VAB could make it difficult to attempt a launch in the next window in the latter half of October.Īt the briefing, Mike Bolger, manager of the Exploration Ground Systems program at NASA, noted the vehicle is rated to handle wind gusts of up to 74 knots (137 kilometers per hour) at the pad. Doing so could preserve a final launch opportunity in this window Oct. 23 briefing, NASA officials said their preference was to leave the SLS at Launch Complex 39B. 25 to make that decision “to allow for additional data gathering and analysis.”Īt a Sept. NASA said in the statement it would wait until Sept. 27, it deferred a decision on rolling the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft back to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at the Kennedy Space Center to protect it from the storm, while continuing preparations for a rollback. While NASA won’t proceed with a launch on Sept. Forecasts by the National Hurricane Center show the storm moving north, then curving northeast to reach southern and central Florida by the middle of the week as a major hurricane. It cited the threat posed by Tropical Storm Ian, currently in the Caribbean Sea. 24 it would not proceed with the next launch opportunity for the mission, which was Sept. 27 as a tropical storm, with the potential to become a major hurricane, heads for Florida. WASHINGTON - NASA has called off plans to attempt to launch the Artemis 1 mission on Sept.
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