NASA has been forced to postpone the launch of its newest Artemis I lunar rocket once more as Tropical Storm Nicole approaches the Florida coast, the agency announced Tuesday.
The highly anticipated launch has been suffering from technical difficulties and bad weather. The rocket was grounded in August following a fuel leak after which moved back to a hangar on the Kennedy Space Station when Hurricane Ian slammed into the Sunshine State at the tip of September.
Last week, the 322-foot-tall rocket was moved back to the launch pad as NASA targeted a launch next Monday.
But NASA officials announced Tuesday that the launch won’t happen until at the least next Wednesday attributable to Nicole, which is predicted to make landfall as a Category 1 hurricane in the subsequent few days.
Although Cape Canaveral is under a hurricane warning, the space agency said it’s going to leave the rocket — which is designed to sustain heavy rains and high winds —- on the launch pad in the course of the storm.
The $4.1 billion mission will send an empty crew capsule across the moon and back, with astronauts expected to make the trip in a few years.
NASA hopes to place astronauts on the moon by 2025, because the agency nears the fiftieth anniversary of its last human moon landing in December 1972 in the course of the Apollo 17 mission.
With Post Wires