NASA will conduct an important refueling test of the Artemis 1 lunar rocket today (September 21), and you can watch it live.
Technicians are scheduled to begin loading supercooled liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen fuels into Artemis 1. Space launch system (SLS) megarocket today at 7:15 a.m. EDT (1115 GMT). Watch it live here on Space.com, courtesy of NASA or directly through the space agency.
Artemis 1 It will use SLS to launch the Orion capsule into lunar orbit and back from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on an uncrewed trip. The test flight was supposed to take off at the end of last month, but was delayed twice due to malfunctions, the second liquid hydrogen leak It happened during preparations for a scheduled flight in September. 3.
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Artemis 1 team replaced two seals at the leak site, a “quick disconnect” connecting the SLS main stage to the propellant line from the mobile launch tower. Today’s test will help determine if this fix works. If all goes well, the mission will begin in September. Two on October 27 with a spare option.
It is unclear how long today’s test will last; one Friday update (opens in new tab) (September 16) NASA officials wrote that it “will be terminated when test objectives are met.”
The refueling test is not the only space flight being carried out today. The Russian Soyuz rocket is scheduled to send cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petel and NASA astronaut Frank Rubio into orbit. International Space Station at 9:54 a.m. EDT (1354 GMT) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. You can also watch it on Space.com.
Artemis 1 is NASA’s first mission Artemis and a program that aims to build a long-term human existence around it month By the end of the 2020s. If all goes well with Artemis 1, Artemis 2 will launch astronauts around the moon in 2024, and Artemis 3 will land humans near the moon’s south pole a year or two later.
Mike Wall is the author of “there (opens in new tab)” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Carl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter. @michaeldwall (opens in new tab). follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) or Facebook (opens in new tab).
