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Cape Canaveral, Fla.: NASA stayed on track for Wednesday’s planned liftoff of its new lunar rocket, after determining that hurricane damage provided few additional hazards for the test flight.
The rocket launch is scheduled for 1:04 AM EST or 11:34 AM EST on Wednesday, November 16.
Hurricane Nicole’s high winds caused a 10-foot (3-meter) section of caulking to peel off near the crew capsule at the top of the rocket last Thursday. Mission director Mike Sarafin said the material ripped into small pieces, rather than one large strip.
“We are comfortable flying as is,” Sarafin told reporters Monday night, based on the experience of flying with the material.
Dispatch is scheduled for the early morning hours of Wednesday from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, with experimental dummies rather than astronauts on board. It’s the first test flight of the 322-foot (98-meter) rocket, the most powerful rocket ever built by NASA, and will attempt to send the capsule into lunar orbit.
The nearly $4 billion mission has been delayed since August due to a fuel leak and Hurricane Ian, which forced the rocket to return to the hangar for shelter at the end of September. The rocket remained on the platform for Nicole. Managers said there wasn’t enough time to move it once it became clear that the storm was going to be stronger than expected.
Sarafin acknowledged Monday night that there is a “small possibility” that more of the lightweight soft dam could explode during takeoff. He noted that the most likely place to hit would be a particularly large and strong section of the missile, which would cause minimal damage.
Engineers never determined what caused the dangerous hydrogen fuel leak during the two launch attempts in late summer. The launch team is confident that slowing the flow rate will put less stress on the sensitive fuel line seals and keep any leaks within acceptable limits, said Jeremy Parsons, deputy program manager.
The space agency plans to send astronauts around the moon in 2024 and land a crew on the lunar surface in 2025.
The last visit of the astronauts to the moon in December 1972, they closed the Apollo program.
Meanwhile, a microwave oven-sized NASA satellite arrived Sunday in a special lunar orbit after its summer liftoff from New Zealand. This elongated orbit, spanning tens of thousands of miles (kilometers), is where the space agency plans to build a depot for lunar crews. The way station, known as the Gateway, will serve astronauts heading to and from the lunar surface.
The satellite, called Capstone, will spend six months testing a navigation system in this orbit.
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