Nasa halts work on moon rocket amid virus threat

NEW YORK • The pandemic is knocking the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (Nasa) moon plans off course.

On Thursday, the US space agency's administrator Jim Bridenstine announced the suspension of the manufacture and testing of the Space Launch System and Orion, the giant rocket and crew capsule that will be used to take astronauts back to the moon.

The Trump administration had set a goal for the next moon landing to occur by the end of 2024. With the spread of the coronavirus, however, Nasa is now shutting down work at the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, where the rocket is being built, and the Stennis Space Centre in Mississippi, where the first Space Launch System booster is being tested.

There has been one confirmed case of the coronavirus among Stennis employees. There are no confirmed cases at Michoud, but the number of infected people in the New Orleans area has risen quickly in the past few days.

The directive from Mr Bridenstine - which took effect yesterday - is for workers at the two Nasa sites to work remotely, but there is no way to build or test a rocket without people at the sites.

"The Nasa and contractors teams will complete an orderly shutdown that puts all hardware in a safe condition until work can resume," Mr Bridenstine said. A minimal team will remain after the shutdown for security and to maintain critical infrastructure.

Development of the Space Launch System - a modern equivalent of the powerful Saturn 5 that took the Apollo astronauts to the moon - has been delayed for years, and the price tag has risen by billions of dollars.

The first launch, a test flight without astronauts on board, was already not scheduled to occur before next year. Now even that target may be too optimistic if work at Michoud and Stennis is suspended for an extended period.

"We realise there will be impacts to Nasa missions," Mr Bridenstine said. "Our top priority is the health and safety of the Nasa workforce."

There have also been confirmed infections at two other Nasa centres: the Ames Research Centre in California and the Marshall Space Flight Centre in Alabama.

The spread of the coronavirus could also jeopardise the launch of the Perseverance rover, which is to head to Mars this summer. That spacecraft is at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, which has not yet been shut down.

Because of the orbital paths of Mars and Earth, the launch must occur in a window in July or August, or it would have to be delayed until 2022 when the two planets again line up.

Another Mars mission, ExoMars, a collaboration between Russia and the European Space Agency, has already been pushed to 2022 from this year, mostly because of technical problems that cannot be solved by July.

More optimistically, Nasa announced on Wednesday that it was aiming to launch astronauts to the International Space Station before the end of May.

Two astronauts would fly aboard Crew Dragon, a capsule built by SpaceX, and would be the first crewed mission to lift off from the United States since the space shuttles were retired in 2011. Since then, Nasa has been relying on Russia to provide transportation for its astronauts.

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