Stronger than the hurricane!
NASA's new mega-rocket for the Moon, still awaiting its first liftoff, has not suffered any apparent major damage after Hurricane Nicole hit Florida, the space agency said in a quick first inspection. American on Thursday.
Further checks will, however, be conducted by on-site employees as soon as possible to confirm the status of the rocket, NASA associate administrator Jim Free said in a post on Twitter.
NASA teams "conducted initial visual checks" of the rocket, codenamed SLS, using cameras on its launch pad at Kennedy Space Center, he wrote.
Update on our #Artemis I mission: pic.twitter.com/7F6brN86KF
— Jim Free (@JimFree) November 10, 2022
These "camera inspections show very minor damage, such as loose joints and nicks in the protections" from the weather, he added.
Hurricane Nicole made landfall Wednesday through Thursday night on the east coast of Florida as a Category 1 hurricane, according to the National Hurricane Center.
The sensors installed on the launch pad, about 20 m high, detected gusts of up to about 132 km / h, but these conditions do not exceed what the rocket can withstand, assured Jim Free.
A launch scheduled for November 16
Nasa previously announced that SLS was designed to withstand winds of 74.4 knots, or about 137 km/h.
“Our concern right now is our employees,” many of whom are without power, “and then a return to take-off operations,” he added.
The launch is currently scheduled in less than a week, on November 16 at 1:04 a.m. local time (7:04 a.m. in Paris), a date which remains suspended for inspections of the rocket.
If necessary, a fallback date is available on November 19.
This summer, two takeoff attempts were canceled at the last moment, due to technical problems when filling the rocket's tanks with fuel.
Then the rocket had to be temporarily retracted to be protected from Hurricane Ian.
The Artemis 1 test mission, without an astronaut on board, is to mark the very first flight of the major American program back to the Moon.
The Artemis program should make it possible to take the first woman and the first person of color to the Moon, in 2025 at the earliest.