CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – NASA moved its grounded Artemis moon rocket from the launch pad back to its hangar Wednesday for more repairs.
The slow-motion trek at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center was expected to take all day.
It’s a big setback to return astronauts to the moon sooner rather than later.
[VIDEO: NASA, astronauts watch on as crucial Artemis II testing wraps up]
The 322-foot Space Launch System rocket had spent a month at the pad ready for potential liftoff, but encountered a series of problems serious enough to require a return to the Vehicle Assembly Building, about 4 miles away.
[2023 VIDEO BELOW: Upgrades made to launchpad ahead of Artemis]
Right now, NASA’s most powerful rocket ever still isn’t ready to fly four crew members further from Earth than any humans have gone before.
The Space Launch System rolled out to the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center a month ago for pre-launch tests.
Wednesday, the rocket left the pad, just not in the same way NASA had hoped for by now.
As the Vehicle Assembly Building’s high bay doors opened, the 32-story moon rocket rolled back from launch pad 39b for repairs.
Just a few weeks ago, NASA said it was possible for the Artemis II mission around the moon to launch as soon as this month, but more technical challenges have kept SLS, and its first astronauts, on the ground.
Your Cape Canaveral Community Correspondent James Sparvero talked to CBS News space analyst Bill Harwood about the launch now being delayed until April, if NASA can fix the problems quickly.
“They really don’t know yet exactly what went wrong that they discovered after their fueling test with this helium pressurization system,” Harwood said. “We don’t know how long that’s gonna take, but I think making April 1, which is the opening of the window, is gonna be pretty tight.”
During the Artemis I campaign in 2022, there were multiple rollbacks before an uncrewed SLS was ready to launch.
“It took them months on Artemis I to finally get to where they were ready to fly,” Harwood said. “This one’s harder to predict.”
As the rocket inches closer, we’ll hear what NASA learns next in preparation for the mission at a new press conference after rollback.
At the first two, Sparvero asked the mission managers about delays and feeling any pressure.
“We put that pressure on ourselves to be successful, but we don’t feel any schedule pressure on this particular subject,” NASA associate administrator Amit Kshatriya answered.
The White House has said it wants to land on the moon, beating the Chinese space program there, in just a couple years.
“NASA really does cast this as a race against China, sort of a new space race, if you will,” Harwood said. “It’s not just the SLS rocket. It’s SpaceX’s ability to perfect the lander they’re gonna use to send astronauts down to the moon. They’ve gotta get that going and they’ve gotta launch it repeatedly and often to work the bugs out of that.”
Stick with News 6 and ClickOrlando.com for an update on NASA’s next press conference.