The folks at the Artemis program left us hanging last week when they aborted their Wet Dress Rehearsal due to a problem with a hydrogen valve on the Mobile Launch Tower (which was quickly repaired). They didn't offer an update until last Thursday, explaining that a different problem was then found with a Helium check valve on the Centaur upper stage's RL10 engine. At that point, they said,
The countdown for the two-day test is currently slated to begin with call to stations beginning at 5 pm EDT on Saturday, April 9 with T-0 planned for 2:40 pm on Monday, April 11.
That never happened. Instead of the call to stations on Saturday, they issued another update moving the date back another three days.
NASA is planning to proceed with a modified wet dress rehearsal, primarily focused on tanking the core stage, and minimal propellant operations on the interim cryogenic propulsion stage (ICPS) with the ground systems at Kennedy. Due to the changes in loading procedures required for the modified test, wet dress rehearsal testing is slated to resume with call to stations on Tuesday, April 12 and tanking on Thursday, April 14.
NASA's Exploration Group's Twitter page noted that when this test is completed, the vehicle will be returned to the VAB.
I would have to say that (IMO, of course) troubles like this are unfortunate but are not unexpected.
SLS on Pad 39B at the start of preparations for the Wet Dress Rehearsal tests. NASA photo.
Yep. Everything's NEW, and this is the first time it has to play nicely together.
ReplyDeleteAnd never forget that KSC is at the end of the pipeline, and all the other centers upstream have already spent all the money!
DeleteIt's still a boat anchor, no matter how pretty it looks!
ReplyDelete