NASA’s moon rocket on track for Wednesday launch attempt

NASA remained on track for Wednesday’s planned liftoff of its new moon rocket, after determining that hurricane damage provided little extra risk to the test flight.

People will do what they do, pack the beaches and the roads leading to Kennedy Space Center, despite the late hour of liftoff that is expected at 1:04 a.m. Wednesday.

Heather Preston won’t make the trip, but she’ll be watching. She eats, sleeps, and breathes science, so she’s a natural as the planetarium director at the Calusa Nature Center and Planetarium.

“This has been a long time in the planning and NASA. There are reasons to go back to the moon. And there are also reasons to go back to the moon in preparation for manned, crewed missions to Mars,” said Preston.

Artemis 1 will bring us one step closer to that, carrying important hardware that will allow NASA to bring astronauts back to the moon.

“It’s unmanned, so don’t worry about astronauts. It has to orbit the moon. And then it has to come back and successfully get back. And that’s that will be Artemis 1 mission that will be a successful conclusion to the Artemis 1 mission,” said Preston.

For Preston, the launch comes at the perfect time. Wednesday, she will hold a premiere for a new film called “We Choose Space.” The film is for people who dream of space and wonder about the future of human spaceflight.

“I’m excited about it. And I think that Artemis, and something like it, have to be the future. Because if the species is going to survive, A; we have to not mess ourselves up, and B; we have to start to move out into space. And so we choose space talks about that drive and that exploration,” Preston said.

It is a small step to get us back to the moon and, hopefully, one day, Mars.

“Yes, humans, Artemis 2. And that is no earlier than 2023. So it may happen this coming year. Or it may be a little bit later. But somewhere like 2023, early 2024. Humans will do what Artemis 1 is doing. So they’ll go up, they’ll orbit, and they’ll come back. Artemis 3 humans landing on the moon, which hasn’t happened since I was a kid,” said Preston.

Hurricane Nicole’s high winds caused a 10-foot (3-meter) section of caulking to peel away near the crew capsule at the top of the rocket last Thursday. The material tore away in small pieces, rather than one big strip, said mission manager Mike Sarafin.

“We’re comfortable flying as is,” based on flight experience with this material, Sarafin told reporters Monday night.

Liftoff is scheduled for the early morning hours of Wednesday from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, with test dummies rather than astronauts on board. It’s the first test flight for the 322-foot (98-meter) rocket, the most powerful ever built by NASA, and will attempt to send the capsule into lunar orbit.

The nearly monthlong $4 billion mission has been grounded since August by fuel leaks and Hurricane Ian, which forced the rocket back into its hangar for shelter at the end of September. The rocket remained at the pad for Nicole; managers said there wasn’t enough time to move it once it became clear the storm was going to be stronger than anticipated.

Sarafin acknowledged Monday night that there’s “a small likelihood” that more of the pliable, lightweight caulking might come off during liftoff. The most likely place to be hit would be a particularly large and robust section of the rocket, he noted, resulting in minimal damage.

Engineers never determined what caused the dangerous hydrogen fuel leaks during the two late summer launch attempts. But the launch team is confident that slowing the flow rate will put less pressure on the sensitive fuel line seals and keep any leakage within acceptable limits, said Jeremy Parsons, a deputy program manager.

The space agency plans to send astronauts around the moon in 2024 and land a crew on the lunar surface in 2025.

Astronauts last visited the moon in December 1972, closing out the Apollo program.

A microwave oven-size NASA satellite, meanwhile, arrived Sunday in a special lunar orbit following a summer liftoff from New Zealand. This elongated orbit, stretching as much as tens of thousands of miles (kilometers), is where the space agency plans to build a depot for lunar crews. The way station, known as Gateway, will serve astronauts going to and from the lunar surface.

The satellite, called Capstone, will spend six months testing a navigation system in this orbit.

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WINK News contributed to this report.