NASA won’t try to launch the Artemis 1 moon mission again for at least a few weeks

NASA has delayed any new launch attempt for the Artemis moon mission until at least Sept. 19 after scrapping a planned launch on Saturday.

The decision on Saturday morning was the second time in a week the launch had been postponed.

The official scrub announcement from Launch Director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson came around 11:19 a.m. ET after several unsuccessful attempts to stop a leak of liquid hydrogen fuel.

Officials announced Saturday afternoon that they wouldn’t attempt another launch during the current launch period, which ends on Tuesday. Instead they said the earliest they could try for another launch would be late September.

“We do not launch until we think it’s right,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said.

The space agency’s first effort to launch this rocket had to be scuttled on Monday morning after a sensor indicated that one of the rocket’s four engines didn’t seem to be cooling down to the proper temperature of approximately minus-420 degrees Fahrenheit.

After studying the problem and troubleshooting, officials said it’s clear the engine was actually fine and a sensor was giving a false temperature reading. “We know we had a bad sensor,” said John Honeycutt, program manager for this rocket at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.

Then on Saturday, as crews worked to fuel up the rocket, they repeatedly detected a liquid hydrogen leak that caused them to stop and start the fueling process several times.

NASA made three unsuccessful attempts to repair the leak before falling so far behind schedule that Blackwell-Thompson ultimately waived off the launch.

Speaking Saturday afternoon, Artemis mission manager Mike Sarafin said the hydrogen transfer line was inadvertently overpressurized but suggested it was too early to tell if that was the cause of the leak.