ORLANDO, Fla. — Even though NASA was not able to complete every goal it laid out during a dress rehearsal countdown for its Artemis I moon rocket at Kennedy Space Center this week, mission managers determined Thursday that enough was done to move forward to planning for launch.
During a wet dress rehearsal completed Monday, 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 was able to be filled and drained with 730,000 gallons of super-cooled liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen for the first time after three previous scrubs of the testing effort since April.
The test didn’t go 100% smoothly, with a new hydrogen leak detected on an umbilical running from the mobile launcher to the core stage.
