NASA said in a blog post on Saturday that it was taking steps to effectively scale back the Artemis II rocket launch after discovering a disrupted flow of helium.
The agency said it is moving the Artemis II rocket and Orion spacecraft back to the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
“This will impact roughly the March launch window,” NASA said.
The agency observed overnight an intermittent flow of helium in the temporary cryogenic propulsion stage of a Space Launch System rocket. The experiment requires a flow of helium.
NASA said Friday that it is aiming to launch four astronauts around the moon and back on March 6 as part of the Artemis II mission after successfully completing a refueling test earlier this month.
The Artemis II mission’s four astronauts, three Americans — Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch — and one Canadian, Jeremy Hansen, entered a second period of quarantine on Friday in anticipation of a new target launch date, NASA announced, because there was still much preparatory work to be done after Thursday’s fuel tests.
NASA has several dates available in early March to launch Artemis, which will make a 10-day trip around the moon, but not land. The plane will carry humans into space, and according to NASA, the mission will fly 4,700 miles (7,600 km) from the far side of the moon, surpassing the distance record set by Apollo 13 in 1970. The mission will test systems for future deep-space exploration.
The mission is in preparation for Artemis III, scheduled for 2028, which will be the first human landing on the Moon since the last Apollo program flight in December 1972.
Richard Luscombe contributed reporting
