KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, UNITED STATES (AFP) – NASA will make a second attempt to launch its powerful new Moon rocket on Saturday, after scrubbing a test flight earlier in the week, an official said Tuesday.
The highly anticipated uncrewed mission – dubbed Artemis 1 – will bring the United States a step closer to returning astronauts to the Moon five decades after humans last walked on the lunar surface.
Mission manager Mike Sarafin, said the NASA team “agreed to move our launch date to Saturday, September the third”.
Blastoff had been planned for Monday morning but was cancelled because a test to get one of the rocket’s four RS-25 engines to the proper temperature range for launch was not successful.
Sarafin announced the date for the new launch attempt during a media briefing on Tuesday, and NASA later tweeted that the two-hour launch window on Saturday would begin at 2.17pm (1817 GMT).
Launch weather officer Mark Burger said there is a 60 per cent chance of rain or thunderstorms on the day of the launch, but added that there is still a “pretty good opportunity weather-wise to launch on Saturday”.
