"During a wet dress rehearsal, the spacecraft to be used for a mission is loaded with propellants to simulate the actual preparations and countdown to liftoff. NASA explained that Artemis 2's Space Launch System, which was already on the launch pad, suffered from a liquid hydrogen leak that its engineers spent hours troubleshooting. They were ultimately able to fill all the rocket's tanks and started the countdown to launch."
"The agency admits that it has other issues to fix, based on what happened during the rehearsal. It has to make sure that the cold weather doesn't affect the mission's equipment during the actual launch in the same way it did in testing . The Orion crew module's hatch pressurization process took longer than expected, and that should must not happen on launch day. NASA also has to troubleshoot the audio communication channels for its ground teams after they dropped several times during the rehearsal."
NASA began final preparations for Artemis 2 in early January aiming to open the launch window on February 6. A wet dress rehearsal on February 3 revealed a liquid hydrogen leak on the Space Launch System that engineers spent hours troubleshooting. Teams were able to fill the rocket tanks and start a countdown, but the ground launch sequencer halted about five minutes before liftoff due to a leak-rate spike. Cold-weather effects, a delayed Orion hatch pressurization, and intermittent ground audio drops also appeared. Ground crews will review data, address problems, run another test, and shift the earliest launch to March. Wet dress rehearsals are intended to surface issues and increase launch-day success probability.
Read at Engadget
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