Nasa announcement today: When will new launch date for Artemis Moon rocket be revealed?

The countdown clock of the SLS rocket with an Orion capsule, part of the Artemis 1 mission, is on a hold at T-40 minutes at the at the pad 39B in the Kennedy Space Center in Merrit Island Florida, USA (EPA)

Nasa is set to announce its plans for its grounded Artemis Moon rocket at a major press conference.

The Artemis 1 mission was due to be making its way to the Moon at the moment, after a scheduled launch on Monday.

But the launch was scrubbed, or cancelled, soon before it was due. Engineers said there was a problem getting one of the four engines on the bottom of the rocket’s core stage to the proper temperature, and that the danger caused by such a situation meant the launch was to be postponed.

It did not say how long it would be postponed for. The next window will open on Friday, 2 September – but Nasa suggested that it might not be ready for then, and that the launch could be pushed even further back.

It is due to give an update on that situation at 6pm local eastern time, or 11pm in the UK, on Tuesday, 30 August.

The press conference will include Mike Sarafin, the manager of the mission; Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, its launch director; and John Honeycutt, the manager of the Space Launch System programme.

Nasa gave no indication of what it might announce during the launch. That may be because it does not know: in press conferences yesterday, Nasa representatives said they were awaiting more data and information about the scrubbed launch before future plans could be set.

Due to the complexity of the issue that emerged on Monday and constraints on how long a rocket is permitted to remain at a launch tower before blastoff, the spacecraft could end up being rolled back to its vehicle assembly building if trouble-shooting and repairs drag on for too long.

Such a move would involve a more extended delay than a few days or a week. But Nasa officials said they were not ready to make that call yet.

Monday’s show-stopping technical snag was foreshadowed weeks ago during Nasa’s pre-launch “wet-dress rehearsal” tests of the SLS, when a problem with a hydrogen fuel line on the rocket forced engineers to forgo a full engine-conditioning test.

Nasa officials opted to proceed to final launch preparations and essentially defer the first conditioning run-through until the actual countdown, acknowledging then that such a strategy could end up causing a liftoff delay, as occurred on Monday.

One additional hitch was a “vent valve” problem that hampered engineers’ ability to place sufficient pressure on a hydrogen fuel tank, Sarafin said.

Additional reporting by Reuters