March 12 (UPI) -- The recent, new delay in NASA's moon landing program represents the latest in a string of technical, budgetary, workforce and public perception challenges that plague the space agency, a UPI analysis shows.
When flight officials pulled the Artemis II Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft off the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center on Feb. 25 after a recurrence of helium flow problems and pushed the launch back to April at the earliest, it served as another reminder of the space agency's current assortment of formidable problems.
Those issues include a moon program whose timeline keeps slipping; recurring technical failures and cost overruns with its flagship SLS rocket; a commercial lander -- SpaceX's Starship -- that has yet to demonstrate reliability; the effective grounding of the Vulcan Centaur rocket made by United Launch Alliance; the departures of thousands of NASA workers and turnover in its top leadership positions.
The agency announced March 3 it had identified the latest problem with Artemis II as a faulty helium seal in the SLS upper stage, and that it is repairing the assembly, as well as making other fixes to the spacecraft.
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