NASA is skipping next week’s launch attempt of its new moon rocket Artemis 1 because of a tropical storm that’s expected to become a major hurricane.

It’s the third delay in the past month for the lunar-orbiting test flight featuring mannequins but no astronauts, a follow-up to NASA’s Apollo moon-landing program of a half-century ago. Hydrogen fuel leaks and other technical issues caused the previous scrubs, AP reported.

Currently churning in the Caribbean, Tropical Storm Ian is expected to become a hurricane by Monday and slam into Florida’s Gulf coast by Thursday. The entire state, however, is in the cone showing the probable path of the storm’s center — including NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.

Given the forecast uncertainties, NASA decided Saturday to forgo Tuesday’s planned launch attempt and instead prepare the 98-meter rocket for a possible return to its hangar.

Managers will decide Sunday whether to haul it off the launch pad.

If the rocket remains at the pad, NASA could try for an October 2 launch attempt, the last opportunity before a two-week blackout period. But a rollback late Sunday or early Monday likely would mean a lengthy delay for the test flight, possibly pushing it into November.

The Space Launch System rocket is the most powerful ever built by NASA. Assuming its first test flight goes well, astronauts would climb aboard for the next mission in 2024, leading to a two-person moon landing in 2025.

A NASA spacecraft will deliberately slam into an asteroid called Dimorphos in the early hours of Tuesday morning to see if this kind of kinetic impact can help deflect an asteroid posing a threat to Earth.

The Double Asteroid Redirection Test mission, or DART, spacecraft is about the size of a school bus, CNN reported.

It has been traveling to reach its asteroid target since launching in November 2021 and will arrive at the asteroid system at 03:44 Tuesday Kabul time.

“We are moving an asteroid,” said Tom Statler, NASA program scientist for the DART mission. “We are changing the motion of a natural celestial body in space. Humanity has never done that before.”

The spacecraft is heading for a double-asteroid system, where a tiny “moon” asteroid, named Dimorphos, orbits a larger asteroid, Didymos.

Didymos. which means “twin” in Greek, is roughly 780 meters in diameter. Dimorphos measures 160 meters across, and its name means “two forms.”

At the time of impact, Didymos and Dimorphos will be relatively close to Earth — within 11 million kilometers, CNN reported.

The spacecraft is about 100 times smaller than Dimorphos, so it won’t obliterate the asteroid. Instead, DART will try to change the asteroid’s speed and path in space.

A briefcase-size satellite from the Italian Space Agency is traveling behind DART to record what happens from a safe perspective.

Three minutes after impact, the satellite, LICIACube, will fly past Dimorphos to capture images and video of the impact plume and maybe even spy on the impact crater.

The images and video, while not immediately available, will be streamed back to Earth in the days and weeks following the collision.

The James Webb Space Telescope, the Hubble Space Telescope and NASA’s Lucy mission will observe the impact.

No asteroids are currently on a direct impact course with Earth, but more than 27,000 near-Earth asteroids exist in all shapes and sizes.

The valuable data collected by DART will contribute to planetary defense strategies, especially the understanding of what kind of force can shift the orbit of a near-Earth asteroid that could collide with our planet.

Saudi Arabia said Thursday it will launch a training program with the goal of sending its own astronauts, including a woman, into space next year.

The kingdom is actively promoting science and technology as part of its wide-ranging Vision 2030 plan to overhaul its economy and reduce its dependency on oil.

The plan, championed by Saudi Arabia’s powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, also calls for greater integration of women into the workforce of the conservative Muslim country. Saudi Arabia lifted a long-standing ban on women driving in 2018, AP reported. 

“The Saudi Astronaut Program, which is an integral part of the Kingdom’s ambitious Vision 2030, will send Saudi astronauts into space to help better serve humanity,” the Saudi Space Commission said in a statement.

“One of the astronauts will be a Saudi woman, whose mission to space will represent a historical first for the Kingdom.”

The first Arab or Muslim to travel to space was Saudi Arabia’s Prince Sultan bin Salman, a half-brother of the crown prince and an air force pilot who was part of the seven-member crew of NASA’s Discovery mission in 1985. He later served as head of the Saudi Space Commission from 2018 until last year, when he was appointed an adviser to King Salman.

The neighboring United Arab Emirates has the Arab world’s leading space program, having launched a probe into Mars’ orbit in February 2021. The UAE plans to launch its first lunar rover in November. If the moon mission succeeds, the UAE and Japan, which is providing the lander, would join the ranks of only the U.S., Russia and China as nations that have put a spacecraft on the lunar surface.