CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – NASA’s associate administrator, the agency’s highest ranking civil servant, says there’s no pressure to launch a long-awaited crewed mission around the moon following a new delay to the lunar fly-by.
President Trump’s executive order to land astronauts on the moon by 2028 hinges on a successful Artemis II campaign, but Monday, a fueling test of the 32-story Space Launch System rocket revealed a similar problem that delayed the uncrewed Artemis I launch four years ago - hydrogen leaks.
NASA told reporters Tuesday that a lot went right with its wet dress rehearsal, like a full tanking of 700,000 gallons of propellants on the first try, but because of the issues, the SLS rocket won’t be ready to fly its first crew until at least March.
“So, all and all, a very successful day for us on many fronts, and then on a couple of others, we’ve got some work we’ve gotta go do,” launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson said.
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Your Cape Canaveral Community Correspondent James Sparvero then asked the mission managers how the pressure feels amongst themselves to get the mission off the ground considering the Trump administration wants to land on the moon in just two years.
Associate administrator Amit Kshatriya answered, “We feel the pressure to make sure that we’re listening to the machine, and we’re doing the right thing for the crew. We put that pressure on ourselves to be successful, but we don’t feel any schedule pressure on this particular subject,” he said.
[VIDEO: NASA targets a March launch of the moon rocket after test run reveals fuel leaks]
Mission managers didn’t say when a second wet dress rehearsal could happen.
It took four of them before they were ready to launch Artemis I in 2022.
They’re hoping they can fix what the rocket needs addressed at the pad and avoid a rollback to the Vehicle Assembly Building.
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That would likely delay the launch even more.
Whatever they decide, stick with News 6 and ClickOrlando.com to stay updated on the mission around the moon.