Armstrong Air & Space Museum, Wapakoneta, Ohio.
Shannon Bohle | The Lima News
WAPAKONETA — A scheduled launch party at the Armstrong Air & Space Museum was postponed due to NASA’s cancellation, the second this week, of its unmanned Artemis I rocket.
At 11:17 a.m. Saturday, NASA officials indicated they discovered a leak in the launch vehicle’s liquid hydrogen tank system.
The explanation for the scrub of its launch Saturday from Launch Complex 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida was that during the filling of the tank with liquid hydrogen fuel propellant, a leak was discovered.
The reason is different from Monday’s cancellation, which was due instead to a problem involving one of the rocket’s engines.
No official announcement has followed indicating when the next launch will take place.
During a one-hour press conference Saturday ending at approximately 5:30 p.m., officials continued to emphasize that they do not feel any pressure to rush the launch.
“Going back to the moon and getting ready to go to Mars, one of things that we did early on was we tried to stress that this is a test, and a test has certain risks. We pounded that in every public comment that we had in order to get expectations in alignment with reality,” said NASA Administrator and former Florida democratic Senator Bill Nelson.
The time, manpower and materials needed to prepare for launch is expensive. However, “the cost of two scrubs is a lot less than a failure,” Nelson said.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Armstrong Air & Space Museum, and in nine days following this second attempt, Sept. 12, 1962, will be the 60th anniversary of President Kennedy’s famous Rice Stadium speech.
“What President Kennedy said was, ‘We choose to go to the moon and do other things, not because it’s easy, but because it’s hard.’ This is a whole new vehicle, a whole new technology, a whole new purpose of going back to the moon in preparation to go to Mars. And yes, it’s hard,” Nelson said. “On the sixtieth anniversary, I will be in Rice Stadium. There will be 4,000 public school students that will be in the stadium, just as it was 60 years ago.”
The Armstrong museum’s staff commented that they continue to look forward to the launch, in terms of its significance to the future of the museum in Wapakoneta, as well as the exhiliration surrounding a new era in this nation’s return to manned exploration of Earth’s moon and beyond.
“We’re very excited about the upcoming Artemis I launch. It will be the first crew-capable spacecraft to journey to the moon since the Apollo 17 mission almost 50 years ago, ” said Dante M. Centuori, executive director of the Armstrong Museum.
“We haven’t heard any expressions of visitor disappointment. Most of us who follow this sort of thing are used to launch delays,” indicated Greg Brown, historian and collections coordinator. “When this launch takes place, it will be very satisfying. After thirty years of focusing on Earth orbital operations, we are now picking up where we left off with Apollo in 1972, manned space flight focused primarily on exploration. I think Project Artemis represents our next grand endeavor.”
“We are very excited about returning to the moon. We are going back to learn more about the moon but this will open a door for humanity to go to Mars. We must learn to live on a close heavenly body before we venture farther than we’ve ever gone,” said Ellen Engle, the museum’s education coordinator.
Reach Shannon Bohle at 567-242-0399, by email at [email protected] or on Twitter @Bohle_LimaNews.
