Artemis rocket heads back to its hangar for repairs as moonshot put on hold

NASA prepares to return its massive Space Launch System rocket to the hangar for repairs on Wednesday, a move that will delay the launch of four astronauts for a long-awaited flight around the Moon by at least a month.

The 322-foot-tall rocket has been parked on the launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida since mid-January, but engineers recently discovered a blockage in the flow of helium to part of the booster’s upper stage that requires further investigation.

This rollback means that NASA will no longer be able to attempt to launch the Artemis II mission in March. Agency officials said they could potentially try in April, but the timeline will depend on the outcome of the repairs.

“I understand that people are disappointed by this development,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman wrote in an article on X on Saturday. “This disappointment is felt primarily by the NASA team, which has worked tirelessly to prepare this great project.”

Getting the rocket back to its hangar is a major undertaking. The 4-mile journey, which is expected to begin Wednesday morning around 9 a.m. ET, is notoriously slow and expected to take up to 12 hours. The 11 million pound rocket, topped with the Orion capsule, will be carried on a mobile platform known as a tracked transporter that will move at a snail’s pace, or about 1 mile per hour.

Once the rocket reaches the hangar, called the Vehicle Assembly Building, NASA said teams will install platforms that will allow engineers to reach where the helium flow problems were detected.

The agency said batteries in the rocket’s upper stage and a safety mechanism known as the flight termination system will also be replaced and tested while the booster is in the vehicle assembly building.

The helium problem was discovered on the night of February 19, following what appeared to be a successful refueling test and walkthrough on launch day. The hour-long test, known as a wet dress rehearsal, was NASA’s second attempt to fully load the Space Launch System rocket with more than 700,000 gallons of cryogenic propellant and practice running through nearly every stage of a simulated launch countdown.

A day after the dress rehearsal, NASA officials announced they were targeting March 6 to launch four crew members — NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen — on a 10-day flight around the moon.

From now on, astronauts will have to wait at least a month to get their moon. NASA’s April launch window includes opportunities on April 1 and April 3 through April 6, with an additional launch opportunity on April 30.

The Artemis II mission will be the first time that NASA’s Space Launch System rocket and Orion capsule will carry people. On February 2, a first wet dress rehearsal was ended prematurely after NASA detected a hydrogen leak at the rear end of the rocket. The leaks forced NASA to abandon any launch opportunity in February.

A previous uncrewed Artemis I flight around the moon in 2022 was delayed by six months due to hydrogen leaks identified during its first wet dress rehearsal.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com