NASA Rolls Repaired Artemis II Moon Rocket Back to Pad for April 1 Target

NASA rolled its repaired Artemis II moon rocket back to its Kennedy Space Center launch pad on Friday, setting up a launch attempt as early as April 1 to send four astronauts around the moon, according to CBS News and NBC News. The 4-mile trip from the Vehicle Assembly Building to Launch Pad 39B began at 12:20 a.m. EDT, several hours late because of high winds, and the rocket arrived about 11 hours later, NBC News reported. It moved atop a crawler-transporter at a maximum speed of 0.82 miles per hour, per NASA, as cited by NBC News.

The Space Launch System rocket stands more than 320 feet tall, and the rollout was its second, NBC News said. It first went to the pad in mid-January, but engineers found a blockage in the flow of helium a few weeks ago and NASA took it back to the hangar for repairs, according to NBC News. CBS News reported that the flight was originally planned for early February but was delayed when hydrogen fuel leaks were found during a dress rehearsal. That problem was fixed and a second fueling test went well, setting up a launch around March 6, but engineers then could not pump high-pressure helium back into the upper stage. Because the upper stage could not be reached at the pad, the entire rocket had to return to the hangar, CBS News said.

At the pad, engineers planned to connect fuel lines and power and data cables and run tests to verify connections, CBS News reported. NASA managers say earlier problems and repairs have been resolved, and that the next time the rocket is loaded with more than 750,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen and oxygen, it will be for liftoff, per CBS News.

The crew is NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen. They entered preflight quarantine Wednesday evening at Johnson Space Center in Houston, a standard step to keep them healthy, both outlets reported. If all goes well they will fly to Florida about a week ahead and hope to lift off at 6:24 p.m. April 1, the start of a two-hour launch window, CBS News said. NBC News said that NASA officials held a two-day review last week to discuss the flight, its risks and remaining work.

The mission would fly for roughly nine to ten days: CBS News described a nine-day flight and NBC News a 10-day trip. It will be the first time people have flown on the SLS rocket and the Orion capsule, following the uncrewed Artemis I flight in 2022, both outlets reported. CBS News noted that Orion on that flight had no life support system, and that the Artemis II crew will spend their first full day in space checking out the spacecraft’s propulsion, navigation, communications and life support before heading to the moon.

Artemis II would be the first piloted moon mission since the last Apollo crew landed in 1972, CBS News reported. The crew will swing around the moon and return to a Pacific Ocean splashdown without entering lunar orbit, but an on-time launch would let them travel farther from Earth than any humans before, according to CBS News and NBC News. If the flight succeeds, NASA plans another SLS and Orion flight next year to test rendezvous and docking with one or both of the moon landers being built by SpaceX and Blue Origin, followed by at least one and possibly two landing missions in 2028, CBS News said.