ORLANDO, Fla. — NASA completed nearly all of its goals with the latest wet dress rehearsal of its Artemis I moon rocket this week at Kennedy Space Center, but without a 100% completion, managers said they need to juggle these results with previous tests done on the rocket to see if they can move forward with a launch attempt.
Teams were able to complete late Monday the filling and draining of 730,000 gallons of super-cooled liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen on the 5.75 million-pound, 322-foot-tall combination of the Space Launch System, Orion capsule and mobile launcher sitting at Launch Pad 39-B. It was the fourth attempt to complete what was hoped to be the final major test before attempting to launch the uncrewed flight to orbit the moon.
A new hydrogen leak on an umbilical running from the mobile launcher to the core stage, though, forced changes near the end of the test so managers couldn’t get the countdown down to the goal of 9 seconds on the clock. The test concluded at T-29 seconds.
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