NASA’s Artemis-1 rocket — waiting to lift off on a delayed mission to the moon — will be wheeled back to its storage hangar Monday night, the space agency said, as Florida prepares for Hurricane Ian.
The move to protect the rocket from high winds and heavy rain forecasts for Kennedy Space Center will cause further setbacks for the unmanned lunar mission, which was due to launch last month and has already been postponed three times.
“After reviewing the prediction for Ian, we will roll our Artemis I vehicle back to the Vehicle Assembly Building tonight,” NASA official Jim Free tweeted. “It was the right and necessary decision to protect our employees and our hardware.”
The decision was based “on the latest weather forecasts related to Hurricane Ian, after additional data collected overnight showed no improvement in expected conditions,” the space agency said in a blog.
The operation to move the 98-meter rocket sitting on its launch pad is scheduled to begin around 11:00 p.m. (0300 GMT) Monday evening, NASA said.
It is transported on a rolling platform that moves slowly to avoid damage to the rocket from vibration.
Hurricane Ian, which was southwest of Cuba on Monday as a Category 1 hurricane, is expected to strengthen as it makes its way through the Gulf of Mexico into Florida.
NASA had waited until the last minute to decide whether to protect Artemis I, hoping to schedule a launch attempt right after the storm passed.
There will now be no more launch opportunities within the current launch window, which runs through October 4, and NASA has not indicated when another launch might be attempted.
The next window will run from October 17th to 31st and again from November 12th to 27th – both with some exceptions.
The emplacement decision represents just the latest setback for Artemis 1 after previous launch attempts were aborted due to the hurricane and a fuel leak.
This latest lunar mission comes 50 years after the Apollo program’s last flight, with Artemis 1 set to show if the Orion capsule, which sits atop the rocket, is safe to transport humans back to the lunar surface.
