NASA ready for second attempt at Artemis lunar launch

The previous launch bid on Monday ended with technical problems forcing a halt to the countdown and postponement of the uncrewed flight.

NASA's new moon rocket sprang another hazardous leak on Setpember 3, 2022, as the launch team began fueling it for liftoff on a test flight that must go well before astronauts climb aboard.

For the second time this week, the launch team began loading nearly 1 million gallons of fuel into the 322-foot (98-meter) rocket, the most powerful ever built by NASA. Monday’s attempt was halted by a bad engine sensor and leaking fuel.

As the sun rose, an over-pressure alarm sounded and the tanking operation was briefly halted, but no damage occurred and the effort resumed, NASA's Launch Control reported. But minutes later, hydrogen fuel began leaking from the engine section at the bottom of the rocket. NASA halted the operation, while engineers scrambled to plug what was believed to be a gap around a seal.

The countdown clocks continued ticking toward an afternoon liftoff; NASA had two hours Saturday to get the rocket off.

Earlier, ground teams at Kennedy Space Center prepared for a second try at launching NASA's towering, next-generation moon rocket on its debut flight, hoping to have remedied engineering problems that foiled the initial countdown five days ago.

Launch controllers began filling the 32-story tall Space Launch System (SLS) rocket with fuel early on Saturday ahead of a 2:17 p.m. EDT (1817 GMT) liftoff from Cape Canaveral, Florida, committing to a second attempt at a mission that will kick off NASA's ambitious moon-to-Mars Artemis program 50 years after the last Apollo lunar mission.

(Graphic: Back to the moon)