{"id":301479,"date":"2026-02-25T13:07:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T13:07:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/301479\/"},"modified":"2026-02-25T13:07:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T13:07:08","slug":"artemis-rocket-heads-back-to-its-hangar-for-repairs-as-moonshot-put-on-hold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/301479\/","title":{"rendered":"Artemis rocket heads back to its hangar for repairs as moonshot put on hold"},"content":{"rendered":"

NASA on Wednesday is set to roll its enormous Space Launch System rocket<\/a> back to the hangar for repairs, a move that will delay the launch of four astronauts on a long-awaited flight around the moon by at least a month.<\/p>\n

The 322-foot-tall rocket has been sitting out at the launch pad at Florida\u2019s Kennedy Space Center since mid-January, but engineers recently found a blockage in the flow of helium to part of the booster\u2019s upper stage that requires further investigation.<\/p>\n

The rollback means NASA will no longer be able to attempt to launch the Artemis II mission<\/a> in March. Agency officials said they could potentially try in April, but the timeline will depend on the outcome of the repairs.<\/p>\n

\u201cI understand people are disappointed by this development,\u201d NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman wrote Saturday in a post on X<\/a>. \u201cThat disappointment is felt most by the team at NASA, who have been working tirelessly to prepare for this great endeavor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rolling the rocket back to its hangar is a major undertaking. The 4-mile journey, which is set to begin Wednesday morning at around 9 a.m. ET, is a famously slow one, and is expected to take up to 12 hours to complete. The 11-million-pound rocket, stacked with the Orion capsule<\/a> on top, will be carried on a moving platform known as a crawler-transporter that will move at a snail\u2019s pace of around 1 mile per hour.<\/p>\n

Once the rocket reaches the hangar, called the Vehicle Assembly Building, NASA said teams will install platforms that will allow engineers to reach where the helium flow issues were detected.<\/p>\n

The agency said batteries in the rocket\u2019s upper stage and in a safety mechanism known as the flight termination system will also be replaced and tested while the booster is in the Vehicle Assembly Building.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASA on Wednesday is set to roll its enormous Space Launch System rocket back to the hangar for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":301480,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[111,139,69,147,392],"class_list":["post-301479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=301479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301479\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/301480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}