Artemis Stuff

[Yazata]

They are conducting the Artemis II wet-dress rehearsal today, as I write this. Crew boards, all of the rocket's stages are fueled, and countdown proceeds down to launch, except without ignition.

Nasaspaceflight.com images

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[Yazata]

Turns out that the crew wasn't aboard during the wet-dress rehearsal. They remain back in Houston. But the rest of the fueling and countdown was conducted as if it was the real thing.

An early problem was a hydrogen leak around a fueling connection. Hydrogen leaks are hard to prevent since hydrogen H2 molecules are tiny little sneaky devils that are always trying to escape, so some leakage was expected. Test conductors decided that the leak was small enough that they could proceed with the test.

Other relatively minor problems developed, most notably problems closing an access hatch. Ground closeout crews struggled with that one, causing a hold, but eventually got it sorted out.

But as the countdown approached t-5 minutes, the hydrogen leak had grown to the point where it was starting to become dangerous, so the launch rehearsal was scrubbed.