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For NASA’s Moon rocket to finally blast off on Saturday the stars appear to be aligned, with weather forecasts favorable and technical issues that postponed the launch earlier this week resolved. For 2:17 pm local time (1817 GMT) Liftoff is scheduled, from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, for up to a two-hour delay with the potential if necessary.  On Thursday evening the chance for favorable weather conditions within that window sat at 60 percent. Melody Lovin forecast analyst said at a press conference that “The weather looks good,” and isn’t expected to be a “showstopper,”. During its originally scheduled window on Monday NASA has also been working to correct the technical difficulties that lead to the last-minute delay of the launch. It seemed that one of the rocket’s four main engines was too hot, at first, though just to be a reading from a “bad sensor” it turned out, the rocket’s program manager John Honeycutt said Thursday. A fuel tank leak had to be patched, in the future,...

During final liftoff preparations Fuel leaks were discovered threatening to postpone the launch of NASA’s mighty new moon rocket Monday morning on its shakedown flight with three test dummies aboard.  At the earliest until Friday the next launch attempt will not take place and could be delayed until mid-September or later.   NASA repeatedly stopped as precious minutes ticked away and started the fuelling of the Space Launch System rocket with nearly 1 million gallons of super-cold hydrogen and oxygen because of a leak. Because of thunderstorms off Florida’s Kennedy Space Center the fuelling was already running nearly an hour late.   During a dress rehearsal back in the spring the leak of highly explosive hydrogen appeared in the same place that saw seepage. The officials said, in June then a second apparent hydrogen leak turned up in a valve that had caused trouble but that NASA thought it had fixed. On the core stage of the big orange fuel tank with four main e...

  NASA’s new moon rocket arrived at the launch pad for its first test flight last Wednesday ahead of its debut flight next week. The 322-foot rocket emerged from its mammoth hangar late Tuesday night, drawing crowds of Kennedy Space Center workers, when NASA sent astronauts to the moon a half-century ago many of whom were not yet born. For the rocket to make the four-mile trip to the pad it took nearly 10 hours, pulling up at sunrise. For the lunar test flight NASA is aiming for an Aug. 29 liftoff. Atop the rocket no one will be inside the crew capsule, just three mannequins swarming with sensors to measure radiation and vibration. Before heading back for a splashdown in the Pacific, the capsule will fly around the moon in a distant orbit for a couple weeks. Further, during six weeks the entire flight should last. Moreover, in NASA’s Artemis program the flight is the first moonshot. The main aim of the space agency is for a lunar-orbiting flight with astronauts in two years and as ...