NASA will be kicking off a very important “wet dress rehershal” for its megarocket this weekend.
The US space agency is hoping to fly a rocket around the darkside of the Moon in the coming months and Saturday’s test needs to go well for this to be possible.
Nasa’s huge Space Launch System (SLS) rocket will be tested on June 18.
It’s the key component of the space agency’s Artemis 1 Moon mission.
Artemis 1 will launch into space and test out lots of equipment so a manned Artemis 2 mission can go ahead.
This will be Nasa’s second wet dress after Nasa wasn’t happy with the results of the first.
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Nasa will simulate how it will launch its rocket including fueling the rocket and a countdown.
However, the dress rehershal countdown stops at T-10 seconds.
The original test raised concerns about a hydrogen leak.
Jim Free, associate administrator for Exploration Systems Development at Nasa, recently told reporters: “We fixed some things around the area where we saw the [hydrogen] leak.”
He added: “This is the first step on getting us back to the Moon.”
The first part of the mission to put humans back on the Moon is called Artemis 1 and it’s been pushed back several times already.
Rumors now suggest Artemis 1 could be blasted off sometime in August for an up to 42 day mission around the Moon.
The flight will be testing out hardware so that Nasa can land the first woman and the first person of color on the Moon by 2025.
That crewed mission is being referred to as Artemis 3 and a lot has to happen before it can take place.
Artemis 1 isn’t a crewed mission but it needs to loop around the Moon to test three key components.
These are Nasa’s Space Launch System (SLS), its Orion spacecraft, and the European Service Module (ESM).
The Orion spacecraft and the ESM should get within 62 miles of the lunar surface and then travel 40,000 miles beyond this.
Once looping around the dark side of the Moon, the rocket should land in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego.
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Nasa was originally hoping for a May launch date but has decided to conduct more tests before then.
The launch date will depend on weather conditions and where the Moon is in its lunar cycle.
