NASA’s historic uncrewed mission to Moon seems to get yet another date as the technical snag persists. The next launch which was scheduled for coming Tuesday has been slated to take place between October 17-31.
The upcoming storm which hails around the south Dominican Republic is expected to grow into a hurricane in the coming days and could move north to Florida inciting trouble for the launch.
Our plan A is to stay on course and to get the launch off on September 27,” Mike Bolger, NASA’s exploration ground systems manager, told reporters on Friday. “But we realised we also need to be really paying attention and thinking about a plan B.”
“If we were to go down to Plan B, Mike said that would need a couple of days to pivot from their current tanking test or launch configuration to execute rollback and get back into the protection of the VAB, adding that a decision should be made by early afternoon on Saturday.
The rocket which can withstand gusts of wind up to 137 km per hour might be sheltered which indicates the scheduled window that runs until October 4th will be missed.
Speculations are that the next window will run from Oct 17-31, with one possibility of take-off per day except from October 24-26 and 28.
The inaugural mission of the Artemis program will kick off a phase of NASA space exploration that intends to land diverse astronaut crews at previously unexplored regions of the moon on the Artemis II and Artemis III missions, slated for 2024 and 2025, respectively and eventually deliver crewed missions to Mars.