(ORDO NEWS) — The Artemis I mission dress rehearsal ended today at 00:37 UTC at T-29 countdown. Today’s test marked the first time that the team has fully loaded all of the fuel tanks of a Space Launch System rocket and started timing the launch, with many critical actions taking place in quick succession.
During fuel loading operations earlier in the day, controllers discovered a hydrogen leak at a quick-connect that connects a cable from the mobile launcher’s tail mast to the rocket’s main stage.
The team attempted to fix the leak by warming up the quick coupler and then cooling it down to restore the seal, but their efforts did not fix the problem.
The launch managers then devised a plan to hide the data associated with the leak to allow them to go as far into the countdown as possible.
The time it took to develop the plan required a long wait time during the countdown, but they were able to restart the countdown.
The teams also completed several critical launch operations, including switching control from ground-based launch equipment to automatic, software-guided rocket flight, an important step the team wanted to take.
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