NASA Delays Artemis II Moon Mission
NASA's Artemis II mission, slated to send four astronauts on a flight around the moon, will not launch in March as planned due to technical setbacks. Following a critical test, an issue with the rocket's helium system was discovered, which may require rolling the rocket back to the Vehicle Assembly Building. The delay is expected to push the launch into at least early April.
- Helium is used to pressurize the fuel tanks and purge the engines in the rocket's interim cryogenic propulsion stage. The flow interruption was discovered during routine operations following a successful launch rehearsal that had concluded on February 19. - The four-person crew consists of NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen. The mission will make Glover the first person of color, Koch the first woman, and Hansen the first non-American to fly beyond low-Earth orbit. - The mission is planned to last approximately 10 days and will test the Orion spacecraft's life-support, navigation, and communication systems in deep space. The flight plan involves a flyby of the Moon on a free-return trajectory, which will take the crew farther from Earth than any previous mission. - This flight is the first crewed mission of the Artemis program and follows the uncrewed Artemis I test flight which orbited the Moon in late 2022. Its success is a prerequisite for the Artemis III mission, which aims to land astronauts on the lunar south pole. - A rollback to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) is required for any potential repairs that cannot be done at the launch pad. The VAB is one of the world's largest buildings by volume and was originally constructed in the 1960s to assemble the Saturn V rockets for the Apollo missions. - NASA's Inspector General projected in late 2021 that the Artemis program's cost would reach $93 billion by 2025, with the per-launch cost of the first four missions estimated at $4.1 billion.
