Transcripts For CSPAN NASA Holds Briefing On Cancelled Artem

Artemis Mission Manager mike serafin, and associate administrator for the explanation Systems Development Missions Director jim friede. After the Missions Management team meets tomorrow to review data and discuss a path forward, we will hold a teleconference to keep you updated. We will take questions from those of you in the room and over the phone. If you are joining us on the phone, press star one to enter the queue. First, administer nelson. Bill i am very proud of this launch team. They have solved several problems along the way, got to one that needed time to be solved. I am grateful to you all for your patience. This is a brandnew rocket. It is not going to fly until it is ready. There are millions of components of this rocket and its systems, and needless to say, the complexity is daunting when you bring it all into the focus of a countdown. You all, no doubt, have been up for some period of time. Our remarks will be short and then we will open up for your questions. I want to say, the Vice President was here. She was pumped the entire time. She is very bullish on our Space Program and on this particular program of going back to the moon and going to mars. We had her meet with assembled guests. We had her meet with members of congress who were here. She toured the omc building, saw the artemis hardware there for the future. Overall, she had a very productive visit, and i would expect that you will see her at a future launch. I want to say, understand that scrubs are just a part of this program. The space flight that i participated in, the commander, 36. 5 years ago, we scrubbed four times on the pad. It was the better part of a month. Looking back, had we got off to a Perfect Mission after the fifth try, it would not have been a good day if we launched on any one of those four scrubs. When you are dealing with a high risk business and spaceflight is risky that is what you do. You buy down that risk, you make it as safe as possible, and of course, that is the whole reason for this test flight, to test it, stress it, make sure it is as safe as possible when artemis 2, when we put humans into the spacecraft. For the details, let me turn it over to mike serafin. Mike good afternoon. It has been a very dynamic 48 hours since i was last here to talk to you. The technical issues the team has worked through, they have overcome a number of them but we ran into one that we need more time to look at. But the american spaceport has been dynamic. We launched a space control center, new spacecraft, and we watched a new rocket come to life. We watched the media show up, thousands of videos theres visitors show up. It has been a dynamic 48 hours. Since we had our launch minus two day Mission Management meeting, a lot control center entered their launch countdown saturday morning. Saturday afternoon, we had a couple of lightning strikes on the pad. We have a 32story rocket out there and there were lightning strikes on towers one and two. Our technical teams quickly resolved and there were no issues with the vehicle through timely analysis and timely data assessment. Saturday afternoon, we also closed out an action from the launch minus two day Mission Management which was to rear verify our communications covered associated with some weight changes that we had with the rocket and spacecraft. The team got comfortable with the communications plan. Sunday was largely a day of rest, data preparation for the team. Sunday evening, a subset of the team came in for the tanking meeting. Myself, charlie blackwellthompson, other elements came in at 10 50 the prior evening, reassessed the readiness to load the vehicle with cryogenic oxygen, cryogenic fuel. We were a go for that. We had a go Weather Forecast was 20 chance of lightning, 40 chance of precipitation through the cryo loading period. During that time the team encountered an issue with the verification on the Orion Software. It had about 20 minutes for a man to verify the flight software. It was a simple misconfiguration. One of the command and control modules was not activated. The team quickly resolved that. Once they configured it, they quickly worked through the software verification. There were no concerns at that point with the Orion Software verification. The tanking meeting itself was very clean. We were done in 30 minutes, gave the go for tanking. Shortly after, the Kennedy Space center went into a lightning alert. Tanking was delayed for about one hour. Once the cyro loading started, we started loading of the hydrogen. The team quickly encountered a Hydrogen Leak at the eightinch Quick Disconnect, our fill in drain. That happened when they went into the fast fill stage. They had to slow down the loading operation, chill down the interface, managed to work their way through the full cyro loading operation of the core stage and upper stage successfully. Once we got through the propellant loading on the rocket, both the core stage in the upper stage, they started the engine bleed. We talked and our flight readiness review about the engine bleed, we knew that was a risk cutting into this launch campaign, the first time demonstrating that successfully. We did encounter an issue chilling down into number three. We needed the engine to be at the cryogenically cooled to temperatures such that when it starts it is not shocked with all of the cold fuel that flows through it, so we needed extra time to assess that. When the team started working on that, they also sign issue with a vent valve at the inner tank. The combination of not being able to get engine to reach chill down, the vent valve issue that they saw on the inner tank caused us tos today and we felt like we needed a little more time. There was also a series of weather issues throughout the window. We have been nogo early in the window due to precipitation, and then later ,nogo because of lightning within the launchpad area. The team worked through a number of issues today. The team was tired at the end of the day. We decided it would be best to knock it off and reconvene tomorrow. We have a mission Management Team meeting tomorrow at 3 00 eastern. We will give the time to rest and then come back fresh tomorrow and reassess what we learned today, then develop a series of options. It is too early to say what the options are. As jackie said earlier, we will come back and talk about where we stand tomorrow evening with all of you. Again, it is an incredibly hard business that we have. In spite of the challenges that we have as well as some other constraints the team had to work through, set up for. For example, we had 42 collision cutouts that we had to manage over the course of the twohour window. Most of those are couple seconds long, some about a minute long. When you think about the type of mission we are flying, it helps you understand how unique and how complex the space launch system is, the orion and the Artemis Program is. We have this upper stage, the propulsion stage that lost the spacecraft to a 900 nautical mile insertion along with the sos core stage. With that we need the performance of it but we also fly through a orbital debris field. One orbit later, we commit to the point of translator check. As we fly down to lower earth orbit, we have to know where all of these objects are. That explains those 42 cutouts. That is something that our Operations Team were paired to do today, we just didnt get to the launch window. A number of challenges. We were ready for some of them. The technical challenges we encountered on the engine bleed, vent valve, those are things that we mean to look at today, tomorrow after we get smarter and get rested. With that, i will pass it over to jim. Jim good afternoon. The administrator and mike covered a lot of things. A few things from me. I sit in a different Vantage Point from mike. His is a lot more fun. We are in the lcc. I found some things in the team today. This was an important attempt for us. We talked about that after what transpired, questions about should we have rolled back, try to do another test . We still feel like going for today was the right thing to do. And that comes in a few ways. Our launch team was really pushed today. They were working a lot of issues, looking at a compressed timeline with that hold at the beginning. We were filling all four tanks at the same time at one point, pushing our team through a timeline. The weather. Mike talked about the weather. Lightning was coming in and out. We were not able to go at the beginning of the window like we thought. There was a lot of coms from the launch weather officer. The hydrogen that mike talked about, when we went to Manual Control, that is something that we did on the locks, when we had issues loading the locks the first time. Going to Manual Control to me is learning. Getting through the first Hydrogen Leak that we had, the same week that we had on the same line to the same level. When we started to do the manual fast fill, honestly, it kept climbing and i thought we would never get out of this, but that got us out of it. To me, what we pushed the team through and i know we can get talking about the team too much. But we continue to learn. That is what we do. Bob said it, we are testing the people and the processes. We put ourselves through a compressed timeline. We will get some shorter launch windows that we have to deal with where these skills will help us. You heard from charlie about extending our timeline about one hour earlier to give us time to work things. I think that helps us today to work things. Frankly, engine three that mike talked about, we didnt get down to the temperature that we wanted. But the other four were not as low as we would like to. There are some things going on. The team needs to look at the data and understand how this is different from what we did during the green run. Then figure out a path forward, which is where we ultimately want to go. We will not have all the data and the implications today. I will reiterate what mike said. But we felt we owed it to you to share everything that we know. I can assure you that there was no other group of folks, not just the folks that worked last night, the folks that started the countdown, no other folks wanted to get this countdown started more than those people. I will turn it over to jackie. Jackie for those of you joining us on the phone come up press star want to get into the queue. First, we will take some questions in the room. Associated press. Probably for you, mike or jim. Is friday or monday even feasible because you are dealing with an engine . Might you need to replace this engine . Is this a problem unique to this . You said you didnt get the temperatures on any of them that you were looking for. What could be the worst case here . Mike friday is definitely in play. We just need a little bit of time to look at the data but the team is setting up for a 96hour recycle. They are Still Holding in the launch council figuration and preserving the option for friday, replenishing commodities out at Launch Complex 39b. You will see those activities starting tomorrow. Right now the indications dont point to an engine problem. It is in the bleed system, that thermally conditions the engines. We did change the diameter of that, where we did the green run testing to hear. To here. We never fully got into the engine bleed configuration through the prior wet dress attempts, and that is something that we talked about at the Agency Flight Readiness review, a known risk to our launch campaign. At the time we said we would not launch until we got through a demonstration of our ability to thermally condition the engines. We need that in order to start the engines and run them successfully. We just did not get there today. Again this really points toward an engine bleed issue on the core stage side, not on the engine or interface side. Jim, i dont know if you have anything to add. Jim we actually stayed loaded longer to try to figure it out, so that we were trying to save as much, as many cycles on the tank as we can. I think we tried to run it to ground as fast as we could. Once we were outside seeing we could launch, the way the pressure in the tank was going, ok, it is better to stop and regroup, stay in the 96hour that mike talked about and figure it out. So you did make it bigger. Jim we also did it, and you will hear from John Honeycutt, where we did the test in the flow. A little bit different. All of those decisions were made hoping for the benefit of physics that went with all of that, from the experts opinion. That is what we have to figure out. Jackie reuters. Thanks. Question for mike or jim. I know you said friday is in play. Given the magnitude of the issues, the combo of things you have to look at, likely that you launch on friday, unlikely . Can you give some clarification on whether you think this is related to the Quick Disconnect issue that you saw in the wet dress rehearsals . Mike you are asking about the likelihood of friday . Do we go on friday . Mike there is a nonzero chance that we will have a large opportunity on friday. [laughter] mike we really need time to look at all the information, data. We are going to play all nine innings here. Not ready to give up yet. Clarify a little bit whether this is related to what you were looking at in the wet dress rehearsals with the Quick Disconnect leak issue. Related, independent . Mike this is probably a question better answered by John Honeycutt, but during the wet dress rehearsal, we saw issues at both the fourinch and eightinch qd, in terms of our ability to retain enough pressure to properly seal those such that we didnt have a Hydrogen Leak. We never got to the engine bleed itself during the wet dress. We need that. So the qd problems that we saw during wet dress have largely been mitigated. In fact, the eightinch today was the issue. A little bit of leakage on that they managed to work through by slowing the fill and chilling it down, and that properly sealed it. We got a full load. We were not able to get a full load in our three wet dress attempts. The fourinch qd that we previously had problems with i think on wet dress four, worked just fine today. I would say that the qds really had no Material Impact on the hydrogen bleed set up. Jim, i dont know if you have anything to add. Jim exactly right, what i was trying to say earlier. We work to the eightinch problem, work that out. Fourinch, we could not pressurize because it was leaking. We did that today. I think we are in good shape. Jackie michael, cnbc. My question is for mike. Im curious to get more learnings on the others of things, the possibility of a rollback. Given the data you have seen so far, how likely does that seem . If you were to roll it back to the pad, where does that reset the timeline in terms of your guyss next launch opportunity . Mike that is getting ahead of our data reviews. We need the team to get rested and come back tomorrow. We will see what the data tells us. I will recycle a line from earlier. There is a nonzero chance. But we will do our best to see where the data leads us. If we can resolve this operationally on the pad, there will be no need for that. If we can resolve this operationally on the pad in the next 48, 72 hours, friday is definitely in play. We need to see what the art of the possible is. We need to team to digest what we have learned, and we will take it from there. Jackie ken with the new york times. This is for mr. Serafin. I wonder if you could give us a primer on the bleed work. Coming from the Hydrogen Tank to the engines, what was changed, why . Did anything like this occur during green run at stennis . Mike i will do for that one to John Honeycutt tomorrow. I know we increased the diameter of the bleed that is used to increase the flow of the engines. Beyond that, it would be getting out of my experience to talk about what other changes there were. If you could ask that to john tomorrow. Jackie jeff with space news. For Mike Sarah Finn you also mentioned an inner tank valve issue. Could you provide more details on what that is . If you didnt have the problem with the engine bleed on engine three, would that have been a constraint to launch alone . Mike we are still trying to understand what happened with the inner tank event but it was clear there was a leak at that valve. The challenge that that created, we want to increase the pressure in the tank in order to establish the hydrogen bleed. The vent was not cooperating with us. It was a delicate balance of maintaining the pressure to establish the bleed on all four engines. Engine three was not seeing the temperatures it needed. The vent valve complicated that. That is the point where the team thought it was appropriate to declare the scrub because we were just not going to make the twohour window. It was one of those situations where we knew we needed more time. Jackie thanks, mike. They are keeping you busy. Kristin with cnn. Rachel crane, cnn. Mike, you mentioned earlier you didnt see temperatures with all four engines you were anticipating. We heard a lot about engine three. Can you tell us about the temperatures you were sitting with the other engines, what the issue was . Mike the other engines were meeting the temperature range, were on trend to achieve what we would need to have a proper start. It was just engine three that was, for some reason, not getting to the proper temperature range. Jackie the fun we have Chris Davenport with washington post. Thank you so much. I guess for mike, what is the temperature that you need the rs 25 to be at two launch . How far away where you on that third engine . Im also wondering how you fixed and that Hydrogen Leak. It just seemed to go away during taking. Thanks. During tanking. Mike as i recall, and it would be a good question for Mission Manager<\/a> mike serafin, and associate administrator for the explanation Systems Development<\/a> Missions Director<\/a> jim friede. After the Missions Management<\/a> team meets tomorrow to review data and discuss a path forward, we will hold a teleconference to keep you updated. We will take questions from those of you in the room and over the phone. If you are joining us on the phone, press star one to enter the queue. First, administer nelson. Bill i am very proud of this launch team. They have solved several problems along the way, got to one that needed time to be solved. I am grateful to you all for your patience. This is a brandnew rocket. It is not going to fly until it is ready. There are millions of components of this rocket and its systems, and needless to say, the complexity is daunting when you bring it all into the focus of a countdown. You all, no doubt, have been up for some period of time. Our remarks will be short and then we will open up for your questions. I want to say, the Vice President<\/a> was here. She was pumped the entire time. She is very bullish on our Space Program<\/a> and on this particular program of going back to the moon and going to mars. We had her meet with assembled guests. We had her meet with members of congress who were here. She toured the omc building, saw the artemis hardware there for the future. Overall, she had a very productive visit, and i would expect that you will see her at a future launch. I want to say, understand that scrubs are just a part of this program. The space flight that i participated in, the commander, 36. 5 years ago, we scrubbed four times on the pad. It was the better part of a month. Looking back, had we got off to a Perfect Mission<\/a> after the fifth try, it would not have been a good day if we launched on any one of those four scrubs. When you are dealing with a high risk business and spaceflight is risky that is what you do. You buy down that risk, you make it as safe as possible, and of course, that is the whole reason for this test flight, to test it, stress it, make sure it is as safe as possible when artemis 2, when we put humans into the spacecraft. For the details, let me turn it over to mike serafin. Mike good afternoon. It has been a very dynamic 48 hours since i was last here to talk to you. The technical issues the team has worked through, they have overcome a number of them but we ran into one that we need more time to look at. But the american spaceport has been dynamic. We launched a space control center, new spacecraft, and we watched a new rocket come to life. We watched the media show up, thousands of videos theres visitors show up. It has been a dynamic 48 hours. Since we had our launch minus two day Mission Management<\/a> meeting, a lot control center entered their launch countdown saturday morning. Saturday afternoon, we had a couple of lightning strikes on the pad. We have a 32story rocket out there and there were lightning strikes on towers one and two. Our technical teams quickly resolved and there were no issues with the vehicle through timely analysis and timely data assessment. Saturday afternoon, we also closed out an action from the launch minus two day Mission Management<\/a> which was to rear verify our communications covered associated with some weight changes that we had with the rocket and spacecraft. The team got comfortable with the communications plan. Sunday was largely a day of rest, data preparation for the team. Sunday evening, a subset of the team came in for the tanking meeting. Myself, charlie blackwellthompson, other elements came in at 10 50 the prior evening, reassessed the readiness to load the vehicle with cryogenic oxygen, cryogenic fuel. We were a go for that. We had a go Weather Forecast<\/a> was 20 chance of lightning, 40 chance of precipitation through the cryo loading period. During that time the team encountered an issue with the verification on the Orion Software<\/a>. It had about 20 minutes for a man to verify the flight software. It was a simple misconfiguration. One of the command and control modules was not activated. The team quickly resolved that. Once they configured it, they quickly worked through the software verification. There were no concerns at that point with the Orion Software<\/a> verification. The tanking meeting itself was very clean. We were done in 30 minutes, gave the go for tanking. Shortly after, the Kennedy Space<\/a> center went into a lightning alert. Tanking was delayed for about one hour. Once the cyro loading started, we started loading of the hydrogen. The team quickly encountered a Hydrogen Leak<\/a> at the eightinch Quick Disconnect<\/a>, our fill in drain. That happened when they went into the fast fill stage. They had to slow down the loading operation, chill down the interface, managed to work their way through the full cyro loading operation of the core stage and upper stage successfully. Once we got through the propellant loading on the rocket, both the core stage in the upper stage, they started the engine bleed. We talked and our flight readiness review about the engine bleed, we knew that was a risk cutting into this launch campaign, the first time demonstrating that successfully. We did encounter an issue chilling down into number three. We needed the engine to be at the cryogenically cooled to temperatures such that when it starts it is not shocked with all of the cold fuel that flows through it, so we needed extra time to assess that. When the team started working on that, they also sign issue with a vent valve at the inner tank. The combination of not being able to get engine to reach chill down, the vent valve issue that they saw on the inner tank caused us tos today and we felt like we needed a little more time. There was also a series of weather issues throughout the window. We have been nogo early in the window due to precipitation, and then later ,nogo because of lightning within the launchpad area. The team worked through a number of issues today. The team was tired at the end of the day. We decided it would be best to knock it off and reconvene tomorrow. We have a mission Management Team<\/a> meeting tomorrow at 3 00 eastern. We will give the time to rest and then come back fresh tomorrow and reassess what we learned today, then develop a series of options. It is too early to say what the options are. As jackie said earlier, we will come back and talk about where we stand tomorrow evening with all of you. Again, it is an incredibly hard business that we have. In spite of the challenges that we have as well as some other constraints the team had to work through, set up for. For example, we had 42 collision cutouts that we had to manage over the course of the twohour window. Most of those are couple seconds long, some about a minute long. When you think about the type of mission we are flying, it helps you understand how unique and how complex the space launch system is, the orion and the Artemis Program<\/a> is. We have this upper stage, the propulsion stage that lost the spacecraft to a 900 nautical mile insertion along with the sos core stage. With that we need the performance of it but we also fly through a orbital debris field. One orbit later, we commit to the point of translator check. As we fly down to lower earth orbit, we have to know where all of these objects are. That explains those 42 cutouts. That is something that our Operations Team<\/a> were paired to do today, we just didnt get to the launch window. A number of challenges. We were ready for some of them. The technical challenges we encountered on the engine bleed, vent valve, those are things that we mean to look at today, tomorrow after we get smarter and get rested. With that, i will pass it over to jim. Jim good afternoon. The administrator and mike covered a lot of things. A few things from me. I sit in a different Vantage Point<\/a> from mike. His is a lot more fun. We are in the lcc. I found some things in the team today. This was an important attempt for us. We talked about that after what transpired, questions about should we have rolled back, try to do another test . We still feel like going for today was the right thing to do. And that comes in a few ways. Our launch team was really pushed today. They were working a lot of issues, looking at a compressed timeline with that hold at the beginning. We were filling all four tanks at the same time at one point, pushing our team through a timeline. The weather. Mike talked about the weather. Lightning was coming in and out. We were not able to go at the beginning of the window like we thought. There was a lot of coms from the launch weather officer. The hydrogen that mike talked about, when we went to Manual Control<\/a>, that is something that we did on the locks, when we had issues loading the locks the first time. Going to Manual Control<\/a> to me is learning. Getting through the first Hydrogen Leak<\/a> that we had, the same week that we had on the same line to the same level. When we started to do the manual fast fill, honestly, it kept climbing and i thought we would never get out of this, but that got us out of it. To me, what we pushed the team through and i know we can get talking about the team too much. But we continue to learn. That is what we do. Bob said it, we are testing the people and the processes. We put ourselves through a compressed timeline. We will get some shorter launch windows that we have to deal with where these skills will help us. You heard from charlie about extending our timeline about one hour earlier to give us time to work things. I think that helps us today to work things. Frankly, engine three that mike talked about, we didnt get down to the temperature that we wanted. But the other four were not as low as we would like to. There are some things going on. The team needs to look at the data and understand how this is different from what we did during the green run. Then figure out a path forward, which is where we ultimately want to go. We will not have all the data and the implications today. I will reiterate what mike said. But we felt we owed it to you to share everything that we know. I can assure you that there was no other group of folks, not just the folks that worked last night, the folks that started the countdown, no other folks wanted to get this countdown started more than those people. I will turn it over to jackie. Jackie for those of you joining us on the phone come up press star want to get into the queue. First, we will take some questions in the room. Associated press. Probably for you, mike or jim. Is friday or monday even feasible because you are dealing with an engine . Might you need to replace this engine . Is this a problem unique to this . You said you didnt get the temperatures on any of them that you were looking for. What could be the worst case here . Mike friday is definitely in play. We just need a little bit of time to look at the data but the team is setting up for a 96hour recycle. They are Still Holding<\/a> in the launch council figuration and preserving the option for friday, replenishing commodities out at Launch Complex<\/a> 39b. You will see those activities starting tomorrow. Right now the indications dont point to an engine problem. It is in the bleed system, that thermally conditions the engines. We did change the diameter of that, where we did the green run testing to hear. To here. We never fully got into the engine bleed configuration through the prior wet dress attempts, and that is something that we talked about at the Agency Flight Readiness<\/a> review, a known risk to our launch campaign. At the time we said we would not launch until we got through a demonstration of our ability to thermally condition the engines. We need that in order to start the engines and run them successfully. We just did not get there today. Again this really points toward an engine bleed issue on the core stage side, not on the engine or interface side. Jim, i dont know if you have anything to add. Jim we actually stayed loaded longer to try to figure it out, so that we were trying to save as much, as many cycles on the tank as we can. I think we tried to run it to ground as fast as we could. Once we were outside seeing we could launch, the way the pressure in the tank was going, ok, it is better to stop and regroup, stay in the 96hour that mike talked about and figure it out. So you did make it bigger. Jim we also did it, and you will hear from John Honeycutt<\/a>, where we did the test in the flow. A little bit different. All of those decisions were made hoping for the benefit of physics that went with all of that, from the experts opinion. That is what we have to figure out. Jackie reuters. Thanks. Question for mike or jim. I know you said friday is in play. Given the magnitude of the issues, the combo of things you have to look at, likely that you launch on friday, unlikely . Can you give some clarification on whether you think this is related to the Quick Disconnect<\/a> issue that you saw in the wet dress rehearsals . Mike you are asking about the likelihood of friday . Do we go on friday . Mike there is a nonzero chance that we will have a large opportunity on friday. [laughter] mike we really need time to look at all the information, data. We are going to play all nine innings here. Not ready to give up yet. Clarify a little bit whether this is related to what you were looking at in the wet dress rehearsals with the Quick Disconnect<\/a> leak issue. Related, independent . Mike this is probably a question better answered by John Honeycutt<\/a>, but during the wet dress rehearsal, we saw issues at both the fourinch and eightinch qd, in terms of our ability to retain enough pressure to properly seal those such that we didnt have a Hydrogen Leak<\/a>. We never got to the engine bleed itself during the wet dress. We need that. So the qd problems that we saw during wet dress have largely been mitigated. In fact, the eightinch today was the issue. A little bit of leakage on that they managed to work through by slowing the fill and chilling it down, and that properly sealed it. We got a full load. We were not able to get a full load in our three wet dress attempts. The fourinch qd that we previously had problems with i think on wet dress four, worked just fine today. I would say that the qds really had no Material Impact<\/a> on the hydrogen bleed set up. Jim, i dont know if you have anything to add. Jim exactly right, what i was trying to say earlier. We work to the eightinch problem, work that out. Fourinch, we could not pressurize because it was leaking. We did that today. I think we are in good shape. Jackie michael, cnbc. My question is for mike. Im curious to get more learnings on the others of things, the possibility of a rollback. Given the data you have seen so far, how likely does that seem . If you were to roll it back to the pad, where does that reset the timeline in terms of your guyss next launch opportunity . Mike that is getting ahead of our data reviews. We need the team to get rested and come back tomorrow. We will see what the data tells us. I will recycle a line from earlier. There is a nonzero chance. But we will do our best to see where the data leads us. If we can resolve this operationally on the pad, there will be no need for that. If we can resolve this operationally on the pad in the next 48, 72 hours, friday is definitely in play. We need to see what the art of the possible is. We need to team to digest what we have learned, and we will take it from there. Jackie ken with the new york times. This is for mr. Serafin. I wonder if you could give us a primer on the bleed work. Coming from the Hydrogen Tank<\/a> to the engines, what was changed, why . Did anything like this occur during green run at stennis . Mike i will do for that one to John Honeycutt<\/a> tomorrow. I know we increased the diameter of the bleed that is used to increase the flow of the engines. Beyond that, it would be getting out of my experience to talk about what other changes there were. If you could ask that to john tomorrow. Jackie jeff with space news. For Mike Sarah Finn<\/a> you also mentioned an inner tank valve issue. Could you provide more details on what that is . If you didnt have the problem with the engine bleed on engine three, would that have been a constraint to launch alone . Mike we are still trying to understand what happened with the inner tank event but it was clear there was a leak at that valve. The challenge that that created, we want to increase the pressure in the tank in order to establish the hydrogen bleed. The vent was not cooperating with us. It was a delicate balance of maintaining the pressure to establish the bleed on all four engines. Engine three was not seeing the temperatures it needed. The vent valve complicated that. That is the point where the team thought it was appropriate to declare the scrub because we were just not going to make the twohour window. It was one of those situations where we knew we needed more time. Jackie thanks, mike. They are keeping you busy. Kristin with cnn. Rachel crane, cnn. Mike, you mentioned earlier you didnt see temperatures with all four engines you were anticipating. We heard a lot about engine three. Can you tell us about the temperatures you were sitting with the other engines, what the issue was . Mike the other engines were meeting the temperature range, were on trend to achieve what we would need to have a proper start. It was just engine three that was, for some reason, not getting to the proper temperature range. Jackie the fun we have Chris Davenport<\/a> with washington post. Thank you so much. I guess for mike, what is the temperature that you need the rs 25 to be at two launch . How far away where you on that third engine . Im also wondering how you fixed and that Hydrogen Leak<\/a>. It just seemed to go away during taking. Thanks. During tanking. Mike as i recall, and it would be a good question for John Honeycutt<\/a> tomorrow, the temperatures on the engine, it is about 500 reagan we are looking for on the engines before they are thermally conditioned. I do not recall exactly where the engines were. Engines 1, 2, 4 were pretty close to that. Three was not getting there. The hydrogen week, in terms of resolving that, hydrogen is an incredibly small molecule, the smallest on the atomic chart. It doesnt take much of a gap in order to have a leak in a Quick Disconnect<\/a>. There are soft goods in between the mechanical plates. Sometimes it just takes a little bit of a cold soak on both sides of that interface, or if there is differential heating on either side of that, it can cause a little bit of a cap gap. The team has experience with this. Our cryo team is good at understanding the thermodynamics going on as well as the timing, how long there has been fluid flow, and they basically recommended when we initially saw the leak on the eightinch qd, to stop the flow. When you have Hydrogen Leak<\/a>ing, it creates a limit ability hazard. They stopped the flow. They were able to do some manual flow procedures and slowly let the fluid through, to chill both sides of the interface. In some cases, you can actually thermally conditioned both sides of that such that they will seal up and seat properly. It is kind of a delicate balance. You want to fill this thing as fast as you can to achieve your launch window, but when you run into a problem like that, you need to slow it down. When you slow it down, you can achieve the proper sealing and proper seating. Again, it was a little bit of science, a little bit of art that our teamwork through today by healing that Hydrogen Leak<\/a>. Jackie lauren, bloomberg. This question is for jim. Earlier you said you were confident i wonder if there are any extra risks of going for a full countdown rather than doing a wet dress rehearsal . Jim just rolling out for another wet dress has some cycles on how many times we roll out to introduce risk that way. We feel like we understood that fourinch leak that we had during wet dress 4. Today we proved that we understood it. We understand how to operate with a leak on the eightinch line. From my perspective, that is where i am basing the fact, make a run for lunch. Launch. Jackie another question on the phone. Merrick. Just to follow up on laurens question, jim. You have effectively five wet dresses at kennedy. You have not gone through on any of them. Can you talk more about why you dont think it is prudent to complete a wet dress test which i think would have identified this rs 25 chilling issue today, if you had gone through the wet dress . Jim two things, eric. I would answer the same way. We still would have taken another cycle of rolling out and back. We are going to learn every time we go out here. If you go back in history, how many times different apollo vehicles came out and tested prior to launch, how many times they scrubbed. The administrator talked about how many times he scrubbed on a vehicle that had flown multiple times. We are going to run into these issues. We will figure them out as we go. Until we put the whole vehicle together had become out for another wet dress, the vehicle would not have been complete, ready to go today, with all of the closeouts, fts installed, everything that we learned about the flow, working with the range to get a 25day time period before we have to retest. I agree, we will not know until we know. But we will also not know until we try. We felt like we were in the best position to try. Jackie the atlantic. This is for mike and jim. After the scrub, he came to talk to reporters. They asked how he felt. He said he was disappointed but not surprised. It seems like he didnt expect sls to get off the ground. I wonder if you were surprised or not surprised with how things unfolded today . Jim i will start with whatever deputy administrator told her family. Plan a week trip to florida for a vacation and you might see a launch. Which is exactly what i told my family. The administrator said it, we are going to launch when we are ready. That is our approach. There is nobody that came onto more for that vehicle to launch than our team that has worked on this. Not just our team, the launch team. A lot of folks have put their careers into this. Everybody wants this to be successful. Ultimately, our job is to make it as successful as we can. We may get to another one where there is another issue and we decide not to fly. That is the most important decision we can make. We are building kathy gave a great speech at our awards the other night. I was talking about artemis 1, and she got up behind me and said this is just the beginning. We need to make sure that we do this right and prudently. Mike i think we all want to see that next step. Seeing smoke and fire is something that everybody enjoys. But we are not going to let another hurdle to turn us from trying to achieve that next step. This is an incredibly hard business. We are trying to do something that has not been done in over 50 years, and we are doing it with new technology, new operators, new team, new command and control, software. As jim said, we are learning all along the way. This is one of the things that we love about the agency, it is a learning organization. We take pride in lessons learned, applying them. The fact that we went from having issues just loading the core stage all the way to getting to cryo loading, having a fully configured vehicle, and just not getting to this engine bleed, is a sign that we have applied a lot of lessons learned. We are trying to get to that next step. Again, that will not turn us from trying to achieve it. Jackie here in the third row. I was curious, we heard on the commentary the flight controllers came up with a couple of plans to try and fix the engine issue during that hold. Can you tell us what was tried, give us some insight into the scene in the control room when those decisions were being made . Mike i will take a crack at that. There are preplanned procedures that the team has. The team worked through those, like when we had the initial Hydrogen Leak<\/a> on the eightinch qd. You do what they call a stock flow and reaver, and then you try again. Those things the team worked through very efficiently. It was very methodical. They had again this delicate balance of wanting to increase the flow rate as quickly as we could to get the tankful so we could meet our launch window, but do it at a slow enough pace that we did not spring another leak, that the interface could get thermally conditioned and seal up. They worked through it very methodically. When we ran into the engine bleed condition, they noted it, three of the four engines looked pretty good in terms of the thermal conditioning. Engine three was the outlier. They tried a couple of steps, consulted with the engineering teams that provide Technical Support<\/a> from the design center. In this case, boeing, Aerojet Rocketdyne<\/a> are the technical efforts, whether it is the core stage or the liquid engine side. They work very efficiently together as a team. There was quite a bit of chatter when we got outside of the preplanned contingency. Then they brought back a strategy on how to reestablish the engine bleed. We just were not successful when we ran into this inner tank vent valve issue that compromised our ability to maintain pressure there. It was at that point that the team focused solely on managing the pressure of the tank. You are preserving the flight hardware within its design limits. Once they did that, we decided it was time to knock it off. Jim the team goes over to a loo p where they are working things. That particular nonconformance issue. They come back and they say here is our plan. Can you give us some time to work it . Sometimes they will play it against software models, another firing room, design models out in huntsville, Aerojet Rocketdyne<\/a>, and then come back with that data. The nasa test director, launch director, encouraging them we had let heard from you in a timeframe. They are try to get all the data. Those two are trying to manage the flow and what we have left in the launch window. That is the process going on across all anomalies, not just that one. Jackie tom costello, nbc. Good afternoon. You all are probably exhausted, so thank you for taking time to talk with us. As you are talking through these steps, you have mentioned various experiences that the apollo crews, Apollo Mission<\/a> controls also dealt with. Doesnt give you a new appreciation for, or as you look at all of this, do you harken back to what your predecessors were doing 50 plus years ago . I wonder how you think about where you are today. You juxtapose that with what the apollo folks went through 50 plus years ago. Jim randy said it best to the other day, they didnt know it could be done, which is even more impressive. We have seen it done. We are trying this with a new vehicle. It is really impressive to me to think they didnt even know that it could be done. You dont know how hard it is because of what is laid out in front of you. These are all programs that we learn from, have an appreciation with the challenges that go on with it. My faith in this team is ongoing. I know that we will get through it. They have seen it done before and they understand this vehicle. Bill one thing that will show you the difference between apollo and artemis, they went stepbystep. There was apollo seven, then eight around the moon, then nine, back in lowearth orbit, where they separated the lunar lander, prepared that document again. Think about that. 7, 8, 9. That is all wrapped up in this artemis 1. Then they went on to apollo 10. Tom stafford, who by the way, was with us today, got a standing ovation from our guests. Then 11. That was the part of what is going to be artemis two and three. It is really a compression of a lot of the things. We are standing on the shoulders of those who had been there before, but with a completely different vehicle. Jackie we are running up on the end of time. Two more. Michael with wall street journal. Thank you. Mike, you talked about the issue of being on the core side, not the engine interface side. Could you elaborate on that . Have you had any conversations with people on your team, folks at boeing, given their role on the core side . Mike we certainly did discuss whether or not there was an engine problem. Marshas question earlier was alluding to, do we need to remove and replace an engine . There is no indication we are at that scenario at this point. Boeing is a part of our engineering team, and the lot control center, on the Mission Control<\/a> team. They are integral to the overall operation. We did tap their expertise. We have a whole host of technical experts aside from boeing. Nasa engineering and safety center. Some of the tech from those are involved from that organization, as well as our nasa chief engineers from the Marshall Space Flight<\/a> center, folks like dr. John blevins, other folks, all weighed in, help to troubleshoot the issue today, alongside our boeing and Aerojet Rocketdyne<\/a> partners. That is where we got to today. At the end of a long day, we ran into not one issue but a compounding issue between the bleed and the vent valve. We just decided it wasnt appropriate it was appropriate to knock it off given the configuration we were in. That is where we got to. Jackie one last question. This is kind of a physics question. Is there something about the position of the main engine three that makes it susceptible to this kind of situation . Could this have randomly occurred at one of the other engine positions . Jim only because i talked with honeycutt, he brought this up. He asked his team to go and look at that. He will probably bring that answer to you tomorrow. He didnt anticipate there was but they are not leaving anything off the table. Jackie thanks. That is all the time we have for today. As i mentioned, after the mission Management Team<\/a> meets tomorrow to review the data and steps forward, we will hold a teleconference in the evening. Thank you for joining us. Tune into nasa tv for continuing coverage of the artemis 1 mission. [captions Copyright National<\/a> cable satellite corp. 2022] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] cspan is her unfiltered view of government. We are funded by these Television Companies<\/a> and more, including charter communications. Broadband is a force for empowerment. That is why charter has invested billions into building infrastructure, upgrading technology, empowering opportunity, and communities big and small. Charter is connecting us. Charter Communications Support<\/a> cspan as a Public Service<\/a> along with these other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. 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