NASA’s wet dress rehearsal—a crucial test of the agency’s Artemis II mission to the moon—has hit a snag.
Engineers had been fueling the mission’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket up with liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellant, and planned to initiate a countdown sequence to simulate the launch. But hours into the process, NASA engineers stopped the flow of liquid hydrogen into the core stage of the SLS, which houses the rocket’s main engines, to investigate and troubleshoot a potential leak.
Liquid oxygen (the other main component of the rocket’s fuel) is still flowing into the core stage. As part of the troubleshooting effort, NASA has paused liquid hydrogen loading into the upper stage, which is designed to loft the Orion crew capsule toward its orbital journey around the moon.
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Artemis II will see four astronauts fly a 10-day loop around the moon and back to Earth, going farther into space than any human has gone before. If the wet dress rehearsal is a success, then the mission will launch no earlier than February 8.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
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