When is the Artemis launch? Nasa could be forced to push back launch date by months
Nasa’s new Moon rocket could be delayed by months after its latest issue.
The Artemis-1 mission was due to set off for the Moon on Monday, beginning Nasa’s plan to take humans back to the Moon.
But it was postponed by an engine-cooling issue during the countdown. Just before the rocket was due to take off, Nasa announced that it was being postponed.
Later, it said that it was unable to set a new date, since the precise nature of the problem was still yet to be identified.
In the best case scenario, the launch could be delayed by just a few days. The next window opens on Friday, 2 September, and Nasa says it has a “nonzero” chance of making it.
In the worst case, the launch could be pushed back by months, all the way to October. And given that saying there is a “nonzero” chance is just about the least optimistic thing one can say while staying optimistic, a long delay appears to be a real possibility.
Before that, however, Nasa has two launch windows to try and use. The first comes on 2 September and it is followed by another on 5 September.
If neither of those can be met then Nasa will have to delay until a new window can be found. Officials have said that would probably need to wait until October.
Nasa cannot simply decide when it wants to launch the rocket because the windows must be set with a number of factors in mind, such as the position of the Moon and the lighting and other conditions that would be in effect when the capsule came back down to Earth. As such it must make use of relatively short windows.
Working to meet them is also difficult. Nasa must move the rocket back and forth from its launchpad to the assembly building, all of which requires detailed work and testing and must be done to an exacting and long schedule.
Any further delays will probably lead to problems with the broader schedule for Artemis. Nasa hopes to send people on a similar trip on Artemis 2 in 2024, and then drop humans on the Moon in 2025 or 2026 – but those dates could be pushed back, too.
