NASA says it will be forced to delay the launch of its multi-million dollar perseverance mission until July 30. The large Mars-bound rover must be launched on an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida before mid-August. , or will lose the conjunction of the Earth with the red planet.
This is the third delay in the Perseverance launch campaign, previously known as Mars 2020, and the most concerning because no new formal launch date has been set.
An issue arose during a wet dress rehearsal test earlier this month. During this standard pre-launch test, an Atlas V rocket is powered by thruster and is counted down to the final moments before ignition. So what happened? “A line of liquid oxygen sensors submitted non-nominal data during the wet garment trial, and additional time is needed for the team to inspect and evaluate,” NASA said in a statement Tuesday afternoon, in response to a query. from Ars.
A source in Florida indicated the problem was related to the Centaur upper stage of the Atlas V rocket, which is powered by liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen.
Expansive launch window
The $ 2.1 billion rover is similar to NASA’s Curiosity rover, but contains several updates, including the addition of a small helicopter, and will launch in configuration 541 of the Atlas V rocket. Originally, NASA established a launch window July 17 to August 11, the optimal period for launching the rocket and for Perseverance to reach Mars in about six months.
Since then, the launch has been delayed from July 17 to 20 due to a crane problem during the stacking process; it was delayed again from July 20 to 22. NASA attributed this latest setback to “a delay in processing found during the spacecraft’s encapsulation activities.”
The spacecraft has yet to stack on the first and second stages of the Atlas V rocket. It now seems likely that the rocket manufacturer, United Launch Alliance, needs to understand and address the problem with the liquid oxygen sensor line before that activity can continue. Once the rocket and its payload reach the launch pad, the mission will also have to deal with the summer weather in Florida, where storms along the coast are common.
On Tuesday, the space agency said it had extended the launch window until August 15 and will examine whether the launch window can be extended for a few more days until August. If the Perseverance mission loses this launch window, it would be delayed 26 months, at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, until the next Earth-Mars conjunction in 2022.
Listing image for United Launch Alliance
