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NASA said Tuesday it will push back the launch of its Artemis lunar mission after a crucial test the previous day revealed fuel leaks. In a statement, the agency said it now aims for a launch window in March, after teams encountered “exasperating” leaks during what it described as an important exercise that follows a countdown-style sequence.
The delay, NASA said, will give teams time to review the test data and perform another full dress rehearsal before any flight test. NASA said the leaks raised questions about how soon the mission’s astronauts could fly, echoing earlier concerns from the delayed debut of the agency’s new lunar rocket.
According to NASA, the leaks emerged only a couple of hours after the test team completed a lengthy fuel-loading operation the day before. NASA said the hydrogen fuel built up too quickly near the base of the rocket and that hydrogen loading was halted at least twice as the launch team worked to troubleshoot using techniques developed during a 2022 countdown for the Space Launch System.
NASA also said the test encountered other operational issues. In its statement, the agency said there were delays during “closing” operations during the test and that ground communications saw recurring audio loss in links between the crew and teams on the ground.
NASA said the four astronauts assigned to the mission—three Americans and one Canadian—monitored the critical rehearsal from nearly 1,000 miles away at Houston’s Johnson Space Center. The agency said it plans to remove the crew from their quarantine of nearly two weeks, then put them back into quarantine “approximately two weeks” before the next launch window for the flight around the Moon.
Before Tuesday’s announcement, NASA had been working toward launching as soon as Sunday with the mission commander Reid Wiseman and his crew. NASA said it still needs to “review completely” the test data, “mitigate each problem,” and then conduct additional testing before proceeding.
The rocket is about 322 feet (98 meters) tall, and the test was designed to simulate final countdown phases by loading more than 700,000 gallons (2.6 million liters) of super-cold hydrogen and oxygen. NASA said the hydrogen loading process took all day Monday at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, with the tank-fueling steps proceeding into a window intended to mirror a real launch sequence.
NASA said the agency has only a few days each month in which it can launch the rocket, and extreme cold had already reduced the February window by two days. The countdown clocks had begun running Saturday night and were scheduled to stop about half a minute before reaching zero, just before engine ignition.
The mission, which is planned to last nearly 10 days, is intended to send the astronauts beyond the Moon, around the Moon’s far side, and then directly back to Earth. NASA said the crew would not enter lunar orbit or attempt to land, marking a step in Artemis plans for longer-term lunar presence that replaces the final astronaut-era Moon missions of Apollo in the 1960s and 1970s.