Fuel leaks threaten to delay launch of new NASA moon rocket
Cape Canaveral, Aug 29: Fuel leaks during final liftoff preparations threatened to postpone the launch of NASA's mighty new moon rocket Monday morning on its shakedown flight with three test dummies aboard.
As precious minutes ticked away, NASA repeatedly stopped and started the fuelling of the Space Launch System rocket with nearly 1 million gallons of super-cold hydrogen and oxygen because of a leak.
The fuelling already was running nearly an hour late because of thunderstorms off Florida's Kennedy Space Centre.
The leak of highly explosive hydrogen appeared in the same place that saw seepage during a dress rehearsal back in the spring.
Then a second apparent hydrogen leak turned up in a valve that had caused trouble in June but that NASA thought it had fixed, officials said.
Later in the morning, NASA officials spotted what they feared was a crack or some other defect on the core stage the big orange fuel tank with four main engines on it but they later said it appeared to be just a buildup of frost.
The rocket was set to lift off on a mission to put a crew capsule into orbit around the moon.
The launch represents a milestone in America's quest to put astronauts back on the lunar surface for the first time since the Apollo programme ended 50 years ago.
NASA's assistant launch director, Jeremy Graeber, said after the repeated struggles with the first leak that the space agency would have to decide whether to go forward with the Monday morning launch.
"We have a lot of work to get to that point," Graeber cautioned.
If NASA scrubbed Monday's launch, the next attempt wouldn't be until Friday at the earliest.
The 322-foot spaceship is the most powerful rocket ever built by NASA, out-muscling even the Saturn V that took the Apollo astronauts to the moon.
No astronauts were inside the rocket's Orion capsule.
Instead, the test dummies, fitted with sensors to measure vibration, cosmic radiation and other conditions, were strapped in for the six-week mission, scheduled to end with the capsule's splashdown in the Pacific in October.
Even though no one was on board, thousands of people jammed the coast to see the rocket soar.
Vice President Kamala Harris was expected among the VIPs.
The launch is the first flight in NASA's 21st-century moon-exploration programme, named Artemis after Apollo's mythological twin sister.
Assuming the test goes well, astronauts will climb aboard for the second flight and fly around the moon and back as soon as 2024.
A two-person lunar landing could follow by the end of 2025.
The problems seen Monday were reminiscent of NASA's space shuttle era, when hydrogen fuel leaks disrupted countdowns and delayed a string of launches back in 1990.
Launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson and her team also had to deal with a communication problem involving the Orion capsule.
Engineers scrambled to understand an 11-minute delay in the communication lines between launch control and Orion that cropped up late Sunday.
Though the problem had cleared by Monday morning, NASA needed to know why it happened before committing to a launch.
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Power tariffs under BESCOM to rise from May 1
Bengaluru (PTI): Power bills for consumers under the Bangalore Electricity Supply Company Limited (BESCOM) will go up from May 1, following an order issued by the Karnataka Electricity Regulatory Commission (KERC) on Friday.
The hike comes after KERC allowed the BESCOM to recover a revenue deficit of Rs 2,068 crore incurred in 2024-25, from the consumers.
As a result, for every unit of electricity consumed in 2024-25, the customers will be charged an additional 56 paise, it said.
"BESCOM shall calculate, for each of the active consumers of FY2024-25 the amount to be recovered based on their actual energy consumption during FY2024-25. Such amount shall be recovered during FY 2026-27 in equal monthly instalments, to be called as 'FY25 True up Charges', commencing from the first meter reading date falling on or after 1 May 2026 and concluding with the reading date ending on 30 April 2027," the order said.
"It is further ordered that BESCOM shall maintain a separate head of account, allocated for the purpose, to record the adjustment of the said amount to ensure full recovery of the deficit," it added.
Similarly Chamundeshwari Electricity Supply Corporation Limited (CESC) has also recorded a revenue deficit of Rs 121.71 crore and can collect an additional 15 paisa per unit for consumption in 2024-25, official sources said.
