Sept. 27 (UPI) — With a strong hurricane heading toward Florida, NASA has postponed this week’s highly anticipated launch of the Artemis I spacecraft and may not attempt another launch until at least mid-October.
“Officials met Monday morning and made the resolution based on the most recent weather forecast related to Hurricane Ian, after additional knowledge gathered overnight showed no improvement in expected situations for the Kennedy Space Center area,” NASA said on its website. The resolution provides workers with time to meet their families’ wishes and protect the built-in rocket and spacecraft system. “
Officials said they hoped agency services would not suffer from the storm.
NASA is eager to launch the SLS rocket with the Orion capsule module on top, but the company continues to revel in maintenance and weather delays.
The Artemis project will take American astronauts to the moon for the first time since 1972.
The company then envisioned a launch window between Sept. 19 and Oct. 4, but the typhoon looming now means the launch likely won’t take place until Oct. 17, when Earth and Moon are in the right tandem until Halloween.
After that, the next release will be November 12-27 and December 9-23.
The first launch attempt on August 29 was canceled due to a fuel leak and a faulty sensor in one of the main engines. The next one, on September 3, was cleaned up due to a fuel leak that NASA has since repaired.