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An engine problem prevented the unmanned spacecraft from leaving on Monday, as initially planned.
The launch of the unmanned space mission Artemis I from the NASAconsisting of the Orion spacecraft and the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, will finally take place next Saturday, September 3, after it was not carried out on Monday due to engine problems. This has been communicated by NASA through its Twitter profile, where it has detailed that the takeoff window of the ship that will travel to the Moon will start at 2:17 p.m. (local time, 8:17 p.m. Spanish peninsular time).
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The Space Agency has detailed that the failure that prevented the launch of Artemis I had relation to one of the four motors of the central stage of the SLS. Specifically, the number 3 engine was not able to reach the proper temperature required for takeoff. Once the fault has been resolved, the director of the Artemis mission, Mike Sarafin, has announced that the Artemis I continues on platform 39B of the Kennedy Space Center, from where it will go into space on September 3.
The Artemis I mission is intended to be the first step, even without a crew, for successive missions with the ultimate goal of return of astronauts to the surface of the Moon and enable a long-term human presence for decades to come. The primary goals of Artemis I are to demonstrate Orion’s systems in a spaceflight environment and to ensure a safe re-entry, descent, splashdown, and recovery prior to the first crewed flight on Artemis II, NASA said at an Aug. 5 briefing. . The duration of the mission is set at between four and six weeks, with a journey of 2.1 million kilometers, with several orbits of the Earth and the Moon in its journey.