NASA suspends Artemis mission: the moon will have to wait
The countdown clock was stopped 40 minutes before the launch. An engine leak forced the takeoff to be postponed until September.
(Cordon Press)
NASA suspended the launch of the first unmanned rocket part of the Artemis I mission, which intended to return to the moon 53 years after Apollo 11. Finally, liftoff had to be halted because of an engine bleed problem, the space agency said.
The next launch attempt could take place during the next month of September. With the Artemis mission, NASA intends to launch the first unmanned rocket to explore the possibility of establishing a permanent human presence on the Earth's satellite.
The powerful Space Launch System vehicle with the Orion capsule was scheduled to launch from the Kennedy Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida. However, the mission will have to wait until the problems announced by the space agency are solved.
Leak in the motor and possible crack in the protection system
Shortly before launch, and after solving some previous problems, NASA engineers discovered a leak in the spacecraft's third engine. The supervision teams also detected a possible crack in the thermal protection system in one of the ship's flanges (connection joints). Although they finally ruled out this leak, the countdown clock stopped at 40 minutes which ended up postponing the launch, for the time being, until next month.
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