Nasa won’t commit to new launch date after scrubbing lift-off

Nasa’s Artemi Mission Manager Mike Sarafin said Monday afternoon it was not an engine problem that led to the scrubbing of the Aetemis I launch on Monday morning, but rather a problem with the engine bleed system in the rocket core stage. The bleed system trickles cyrogenic fuel into the engines to chill them down so the engines are not “shocked” when fuel flows into them at full pressure at launch.

At the same time, Mr Sarafin said that while he could not say for sure that Artemis I could be ready for launch by the next launch window on Friday, “Friday is definitely in play.”

According to Nasa officials speaking at a Monday afternoon press conference, the Artemis I launch faced weather challenges that would have kept the rocket from launching on time even had engine troubles not led the space agency to scrub the launch.

“We would have been no go at the beginning of the window our to precipitation, and later in the window we would have been no go due to lightning,” Nasa’s Artemis Mission Manager Mike Sarafin said Monday.

Nasa is still working on the options for following up Monday’s scrubbed launch, according to Artemis Mission Manager Mike Sarafin

“It’s too early to say what the options are,” he said at a Monday afternoon press conference, but added “we will come back and talk about where we stand tomorrow evening.”

Speaking at a press conference, Nasa Administrator Bill Nelson says taht scrubs are just part of space flight.

“On the spaceflight hat I participated in …. 36 and a half years ago, we scrubbed four times on the pad,” Mr Nelson said. “This is a brand new rocket, it’s not going to fly until it’s ready.”

Nasa officials will brief the press at 1 p.m. on what happened to cause the space agency to scrub the launch of the Artemis I mission that was originally scheduled for Monday morning.

Live coverage of the press conference will continue on this blog. You can watch the press conference live on Nasa’s website.

Why was the launch scrubbed and what happens next? Jon Kelvey answers both these questions in his latest report on the Artemis mission.

Nasa will be holding a press conference in a few hours, where we should learn more details about what went wrong today.

We will also hopefully find out whether the US space agency plans to proceed with a launch when the next window opens on Friday.

We’ll be bringing you all the latest updates from the press conference as soon as it is live.

We’ve just heard from Nasa administrator Bill Nelson, who spoke about what went wrong with the Artemis 1 launch.

“We don’t launch until it’s right,” he said. “It’s just illustrative that this is a very complicated machine, a very complicated system, and all those things have to work. You don’t want to light the candle until it’s ready to go.”

He also revealed that US Vice President Kamala Harris was at the Kennedy Space Centre today for the failed launch attempt, who Mr Nelson described as “an enthusiastic space booster”.

We’re going to have to wait until Friday at the earliest for the next launch attempt of Nasa’s Space Launch System.

“The launch of Artemis 1 is no longer happening today as teams work through an issue with an engine bleed,” the US space agency tweeted. “Teams will continue to gather data, and we will keep you posted on the timing of the next launch attempt.”

Following a nearly hour long hold in the launch countdown, Nasa finally scrubbed the launch of the Artemis I mission schedule for Monday morning after an issue with one of the rocket’s main engines proved too difficult to solve on the launch pad.

While Nasa officials had expressed their hopes that Artemis I would launch Monday, the space agency has moved with cautious urgency throughout the testing and developing of the SLS rocket, up to and including back up launch dates for Artemis I. The next launch windows will open on 2 September and, if that window closes without a launch, 5 September.