NASA plans to roll its massive moon rocket onto the launchpad at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center on Thursday evening, setting the stage for four astronauts’ long-awaited journey around the moon.
The 322-foot-tall Space Launch System rocket, topped with an Orion capsule, will launch the crew on a 10-day trip beginning April 1. But first, the rocket and spacecraft must make an arduous, slow, 4-mile trek from the hangar to the launchpad.
The journey will start at 8 pm ET and is likely to end about 12 hours later.
This is the second rollout of the 11 million pound rocket. It first rolled onto the launchpad in mid-January, but several weeks ago, engineers discovered a blockage in the flow of helium that required NASA to return the rocket to its vehicle assembly building for repairs.
The return of the vehicle to the launchpad involves a moving platform called a crawler-transporter, which moves at a speed of about 1 mile per hour.
The mission, known as Artemis II, will mark the first time NASA’s Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft will carry humans. It will be the system’s second space mission, after Artemis I, an uncrewed mission around the Moon in 2022. The crew members — NASA astronauts Reed Weissman, Christina Koch and Victor Glover and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen — orbited the moon before they got any distance from Earth.
NASA said it was able to fix helium flow problems while the rocket was in the hangar by replacing a seal in the line that feeds helium from ground systems to the rocket. Engineers replaced the rocket and Orion spacecraft batteries and conducted various tests.
The helium problem was revealed after an hour-long fuel test, known as a wet dress rehearsal, and a launch day walkthrough. This is the second such test of the rocket after the first had to be stopped early due to a hydrogen leak at the rear end of the rocket.
Last week, NASA officials met for a two-day conference called the Flight Readiness Review. Mission managers, the four-astronaut crew and other NASA representatives discussed the upcoming flight, its risks and the work ahead. The agency decided to move forward with the launch effort in April, formally certifying the rocket and spacecraft for flight.
