NASA had to scrub the wet dress rehearsal of its Space Launch System (SLS) mega-moon rocket. The test scheduled for this weekend, during which the rocket will be filled with fuel and counted down as if for a launch, was canceled on Sunday 3 April.
“Teams decided to scrub tank operations for the wet dress rehearsal as the ability to pressurize the mobile launcher was lost,” NASA wrote in a briefing To update. “The fans are needed to positively pressurize the enclosed areas within the mobile launcher and keep out hazardous gases. Technicians cannot safely proceed with propellant loading into the rocket core stage and intermediate cryogenic propulsion stage without this capability.”
Engineers have investigated the issue and found that the fan issue is the only problem space.com. Everything else is going as expected, so the team will quickly refuel the rocket tomorrow, Monday April 4th.
This weekend’s test was already behind schedule due to weather-related delays. Earlier in the day, NASA announced that there had been four lightning strikes that struck the launch pad lighting towers. The agency confirmed that “the first three strikes were of low intensity at Tower Two and continue to review data on the fourth strike, which was of higher intensity than Tower One.” Both the SLS rocket core stage and the Orion spacecraft were powered up at the time, but there were no concerns about damaging these and the lightning towers are designed to deflect lightning strikes in just that situation. The fan issue is not believed to be related to the lightning strikes.
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