NASA powered the huge moon rocket for the first time on Monday and conducted a critical countdown test despite the fuel line leaking. This was NASA’s fourth crack in the very important rehearsal general, the last major milestone before the long-awaited debut of the lunar rocket. Previous attempts in April were thwarted by a fuel leak, as well as stuck valves and other technical issues. Another leak – this time to an outside fuel line – nearly limited Monday’s test at the Kennedy Space Center. But NASA executives decided to do the countdown anyway. Traffic manager Charlie Blackwell-Thompson said they went to see “how the team performed, how the material performed and they both performed very well”. The engineers wanted to get to the point of 9 seconds – just before starting the engine – to validate all systems and procedures. But it was cut to 29 seconds. A NASA spokesman, Derrol Nail, said it was not immediately clear why the countdown had stopped. Earlier, nearly 1 million gallons of supercooled liquid hydrogen and oxygen were loaded on the 98-meter-long rocket known as the Space Launch System, or SLS. Test delays have spurred the actual launch – with an empty Orion capsule flying around the moon and back – as early as late August. This test flight is vital before the astronauts board. Blackwell-Thompson said it was too early to say what NASA’s next step might be. The second SLS flight, designed for 2024, will send a crew around the moon and back. The third mission – no earlier than 2025 – would have the astronauts actually land on the moon. The astronauts last walked on the moon in 1972 during NASA’s Apollo program. The new program is called Artemis, the twin sister of Apollo in Greek mythology.
