Updated 9/3/2022; 8:01 PM

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA’s new moon rocket sprang another dangerous fuel leak Saturday, forcing launch controllers to call off their second attempt this week to send a crew capsule into lunar orbit with test dummies. The inaugural flight is now off for weeks, if not months.

The previous try on Monday at launching the 322-foot (98-meter) Space Launch System rocket, the most powerful ever built by NASA, was also troubled by hydrogen leaks, though they were smaller. That was on top of leaks detected during countdown drills earlier in the year.

After the latest setback, mission managers decided to haul the rocket off the pad and into the hangar for further repairs and system updates. Some of the work and testing may be performed at the pad before the rocket is moved. Either way, several weeks of work will be needed, according to officials.

With a two-week launch blackout period looming in just a few days, the rocket is now grounded until late September or October. NASA will work around a high-priority SpaceX astronaut flight to the International Space Station scheduled for early October.

September 1, 2022

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) —NASA will try again in three weeks to launch it’s new moon rocket, after the engine trouble halted the first and second countdown in a  week.

John Honeycutt said, That’s better “than us sitting around scratching our heads, was it good enough or not.” Proceeding toward a Saturday launch will provide additional insight, even if the problem reappears and the countdown is halted again.

The Space Launch System rocket will attempt to send the capsule around the moon and back. No one will be aboard, just three test dummies. If successful, it will be the first capsule to fly to the moon since NASA’s Apollo program 50 years ago.

I asked one of our 10th graders , Carmen Rivera and she responded with that she felt that there should be more tests and run it before they send the rocket out.