NASA Scrubs Artemis 1 Launch Again
NASA scrubbed today’s launch attempt for Artemis 1 after 2.5 hours of problems with a leak in a liquid hydrogen valve that provide fuel to the SLS core stage. Despite 3 different attempts to get the value to seal NASA was unable to make that happen. No launch in the immediate future – launch date in October is likely. Mission links below.
NASA Sets Coverage for Artemis I Moon Mission Next Launch Attempt, NASA
“NASA is targeting 2:17 p.m. EDT on Saturday, Sept. 3, for the launch of Artemis I, the first integrated test of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, Orion spacecraft, and the ground systems at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. There is a two-hour launch window for the next attempt.”
Notes from Thursday’s 6:00 pm EDT NASA press briefing:
According to Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, NASA KSC found the purge leak and were able to fix it on the pad. She said that the Artemis 1 countdown is working toward a 2:17 pm EDT launch.
The weather office says that the weather for an Artemis 1 launch on Saturday is 60% and if things slip to Monday then it will be 70%.
John Honeycutt said “we know that we had a bad sensor at the engine. We’re getting good quality propellant through the engine.”
According to Mike Sarafin: There are some Limitations on how many times can try are orbital mechanics and flight termination system batteries but there is no limit on how many times can tank and de-tank.
The question someone should be asking #NASA is what happens if Artemis 1 is not totally successful. Is it simply a given that there will be a crew on Artemis II no matter how well or flawed Artemis 1 plays out? Boeing did a second uncrewed flight of Starliner to satisfy NASA.
NASA Links
28 responses to “NASA Scrubs Artemis 1 Launch Again”
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It took a “highly visible failure” to force a Starliner retest, and there is a lot more political weight behind SLS than Starliner ever had. Given the politics involved, I don’t think anything short of a RUD would be enough to get a second SLS test flight. If a second SLS was waiting in the wings ready to fly it might be different, but with a two year delay between flights I don’t see it happening.
Don’t think I’d want to be on the first crew, flying to the moon. On the first manned flight. Yikes.
Wayne Hale showed take repeated tanking/detanking affects foam damage:
https://waynehale.wordpress…
“But in December 2005, scientists discovered that the normal thermal cycles the fuel went through as the tank was filled could cause the foam to crack…but only when the tank was full. They’d never tested the foam with full tanks, only partially filled ones. The foam hadn’t been wrongly installed at all.”
So im not sure I believe the statement: ” but there is no limit on how many times can tank and de-tank.”
I was watching when the technical team recommended they scrub for the day.
Instead of immediately accepting their recommendation on scrubbing management had to confer on what to do. Really?
I had thoughts of management trying to figure out a reasonable way of overruling the scrub recommendation.
The team said they were NO-GO for launch. That doesn’t mean you don’t try to utilize the fueled/chilled vehicle for further cryo studies to obtain engineering data or perform in-situ debugging. They did that on the previous launch attempt after the scrub.
Brings back memories of the STS-35/STS-38 pad swap dance. Not that I believe in latent curses, but are any of the SSMEs from either of those flights part of the cadre on this booster?
no, they are 2045, 2056, 2058 & 2060. STS-35 had 2012, 2024, 2028 and STS-38 had 2019, 2022 and 2027. either not cursed, or affected by a different curse 😉
Talking with someone about these scrubs, maybe that’s why RP1 was selected for first stage of Saturn V as they knew cryo hydrogen is really difficult to deal with. Which we all seen no Saturn failed in flight (though some had issues but not abortive).
The Saturn Vs second and third stages used hydrogen for it’s J-2 engines.
So, it’s not like their only experience using hydrogen was the with the shuttle.
They have plenty of experience using hydrogen going all the way back to 1960’s.
Likewise, the current Delta IV Heavy LV uses liquid hydrogen both first and second stages
Delta 4 medium was, and Delta 4 heavy will soon be, discontinued for high cost of operations. Much of this is related to using hydrogen in a first stage. Note that their replacement, Vulcan, will use liquid methane – a hydrocarbon which is much easier to manage and more energy dense..
Hydrocarbons are simply the superior choice for a first stage. Isp itself hardly matters, since staging occurs at such a low delta-V. The density impulse (Isp x density) of LOX/RP-1 is considerably higher than LOX/LH2, and engineering a tank for RP-1 is much easier. Pumping LOX/RP-1 to engine chamber pressure requires much less power than pumping LOX/LH2, due to the higher density.
The H2 umbilical and its supporting structure for the Shuttle appears to be more closely coupled than for SLS. On the other hand, the supporting (truss-like) structure for SLS provides more stiffness. Nevertheless, could it be that the longer umbilical allows more shortening to occur due to thermal strain?
NASA now says it will be several weeks before the next attempt.
Who in NASA comes up with these requirements? They build a billion dollar “utility tower” for the launch vehicle that does not permit access to most of the umbilical connections, valves, battery plug ins? Every time they have a problem they need to roll back to the VAB, thus costing 6-8 weeks of schedule. I guess in the meantime every one just stands around twiddling their thumbs?
Seems like something like the Apollo era Mobile Service Structure (MSS) might come in handy right around now…
One would think for $1B the MLP and such would allow more robust access at the pad. Maybe the second tower that is three years behind schedule and going to cost another $1B can get things right for launches down the road.
Also ..there should be more than one pump at the gas station
for every ground resource to the vehicle…
should be one fault tolerant
NASA – rolls rocket back to VAB to change batteries and fix quick disconnect. Over a month delay.
SpaceX – changes raptor engine, on the pad, in 10 hours.
It does seem that NASA’s contractors on both SLS and the MLP either ignored, discarded or simply didn’t know about the decades of lessons learned during the Shuttle and EELV programs.
Good thing about the programs which are way past schedule, like SLS. No one remembers the managers who made the poor decisions that designed a utility tower that doesn’t have the retractable arms that would permit access for valve, refill or battery changeouts. In industry these people would have either never made it to leadership positions or would have been fired by now. In NASA its just taken for granted they must have some useful ability.
SLS I am afraid was probably a bad idea. They took a lot of systems off Shuttle which had problems and combined them into one rocket where the problems multiply and it might be a question of whether they ever get this resolved. Other vehicles, like Orion, were also bad choices among some high up NASA managers and assistant Administrators. You’d think with their Purdue educations they could have made some better choices. But when you put people in charge of design and development programs who have never designed or developed anything, stand by for problems. Some of us who had experience in requirements definition and hardware design and development, were specifically excluded from Orion, Constellation and Artemis. So good luck to those who come in our wake because they might be in for a rough go.
There’s the long list of successful LH2-LOX rocket engines on vehicles currently being flown by the USA ; France-ESA ; India; Japan ; China ; plus retired Russian with a new engine pending. All those engines up and running – except the used/refurbished experienced RS-25 under Artemis. Surely somebody somewhere knows how to fix this pox. That or we will end up watching a $ 4 billion rocket rot on the pad and die of old age without being flown once.
The best way forward is to drop SLS like a hot potato as a sunk cost that cannot be recovered and go with SpaceX. SLS is a good example of going with a comforting lie rather than an inconvenient uncomfortable truth.
And go with which SpaceX rocket? Starliner hasn’t flown yet either.
Or bring back the DC-X from the dustbin and get to working on it again.
Why?
Blue Origin has those little suborbital bunny hops pretty well worked out.
what if the SLS rocket on the pad is just a mock up and Boeing / Jacobs just spent all the money??