The subsequent Artemis 1 launch try may happen as quickly as subsequent week, seeing as NASA has met all of the aims it got down to do to think about its rocket’s fuel test a success. NASA needed to check including super-cooled gasoline to the Space Launch System’s tanks to substantiate the repairs it made after it scrubbed the mission’s second launch try in late August. The floor crew at Kennedy Space Center noticed a persistent hydrogen leak affecting one of many gasoline traces on the SLS on the time and tried to repair it the day of thrice. In the top, the crew was unsuccessful and determined to postpone the mission.

The crew decided a number of days later that the leak was triggered when the SLS rocket’s core booster tank went by a quick overpressurization. To stop the identical incident from taking place, the crew adjusted procedures for filling the rocket’s tank with propellants, and it entails transitioning temperatures and pressures extra slowly to stop speedy modifications that would trigger leakage. The crew’s engineers additionally changed the rocket’s liquid hydrogen seals after discovering a small indentation in considered one of them that will have contributed to the leak. 

While the engineers encountered one other hydrogen leak in the course of the gasoline check, their troubleshooting efforts labored this time round and acquired the leak to “within allowable rates.” That allowed them to conduct the pre-pressurization check, which introduced up the liquid hydrogen tank’s strain degree to match what it could expertise simply earlier than an precise launch. 

Artemis 1 launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson said the test went “really well” and that the crew was in a position to accomplish all of the aims it got down to do. NASA will now consider knowledge from the check earlier than deciding if it might schedule one other launch for the mission on its goal date of September 27th.