– NASA’s new $4 billion moon rocket endured high winds and heavy rain early Thursday as it rode Hurricane Nicole to the launch pad in Florida with apparently only minor damage, according to an early NASA inspection after the storm.
Sustained winds of 85 miles per hour (136.8 km per hour) were measured by launch site sensors hundreds of feet above the ground, with gusts exceeding 100 mph, testing the 32-story rocket’s design limits and posing additional risks to a spacecraft already plagued by technical glitches that delayed its first launch. NASA’s wind sensor measurements are made available to the public by the US National Weather Service online. The rocket is designed to withstand launch-site exposure to winds of up to 85 mph, US space agency officials said before the storm. In a brief message posted on Twitter by NASA Deputy Administrator Jim Free, the agency acknowledged wind sensor readings of 60-foot-high gusts that peaked at 82 mph. The National Hurricane Center in Miami reported Nicole’s maximum sustained winds on the ground at 75 mph, with higher gusts, when she made landfall before dawn Thursday south of the Kennedy Space Center’s Cape Canaveral launch site. Instead of trying to roll the massive Space Launch System (SLS) rocket back into its hangar before the hurricane hit, NASA had opted to crash the vehicle at the launch site where it arrived last week before Nicole emerged as a tropical storm. . SLS and the Orion capsule were preparing for a third launch attempt — after two aborted countdowns in late summer — that would mark their long-awaited first flight and the inaugural mission of NASA’s Artemis lunar exploration program. NASA engineers argued that attempting to transport the massive rocket, a 12-hour operation, in high winds as the storm approached was too dangerous. “Camera inspections show very minor damage, including loose caulking and tears in the weather covers,” tweeted Free, who oversees much of the agency’s Artemis program. “The team will conduct additional on-site spot checks of the vehicle shortly.” NASA rolled the SLS into its launch pad last Thursday for a scheduled Nov. 14 launch, aiming to make a long-delayed first unmanned test flight to the moon. “Even at that point, there was always the concern that somewhere out in the Caribbean would be a favorable area for at least some development of a tropical system,” said Mark Burger, a weather launch officer at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s 45th Meteorological Squadron. . . “Of course, there was nothing out there at the time, so you can only go with the probabilistic aspect,” he added. Nicole shaped up as a potential tropical storm as the SLS touched down on the pad, about 4 miles from where it had been stored inside NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building. NASA on Tuesday pushed back the rocket’s launch date to Nov. 16, when forecasters predicted Nicole would develop into a hurricane. A NASA spokesman said Thursday that the agency has not ruled out a Nov. 16 launch, but added: “It is premature to confirm a launch date as we have just started taking personnel out for inspections.
