“Once we got through loading the propellant into the rocket, both the core stage and the upper stage, they started bleeding the engine,” Artemis mission manager Mike Sarafin said. “We discussed in the flight readiness review the engine bleed, we knew it was a risk for this launch campaign and it would be the first time we’d successfully demonstrated it.” The launch was postponed this morning when the launch team discovered an engine bleed problem in engine #3. Before launch, very cold liquid hydrogen is pumped through the engine to prepare it for launch. Three of the four engines performed as expected, but engine #3 experienced a problem. “We ran into a problem cooling engine #3. We need the engine to be at a cryogenically cool temperature so that when it starts, it doesn’t get shocked with all the cold fuel flowing through it. We needed a little extra time to evaluate that,” Sarafin explained. “When the team started working on it, they also saw a problem with the vent valve in the inner tank,” he added. “So the combination of not being able to get the #3 engine loose and then the vent valve issue they saw in the inner tank really made us stop today and we felt a little bit more time,” he noted.
