NASA’s Artemis II moon rocket is back on the move as the space agency prepares the spacecraft for a potential launch before the April deadline.
This is the second time the 322-foot-tall (98 meters) Space Launch System and Orion capsule stack has been rolled out to the launch pad this year, the first having took place on 17 January. But after two wet dress rehearsals and two leaks, NASA decided against it roll the rocket back to the vehicle assembly building for repairs.
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Embarking from the Vehicle Assembly Building to Launch Pad 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the 11 million pound (5 million kilogram) stack rolls at a speed of about 1 mph (1.6 km/h) along a 4-mile (6.4 kilometer) route.
The journey is set to take up to 12 hours, including the trip delayed for several hours due to strong windsaccording to NASA.
Once at the pad, the rocket will undergo a series of final tests, including a wet general test to fill the rocket with hydrogen fuel and oxygen oxidizer. If all of these hurdles are cleared, NASA will announce a date in the April window, which includes April 1-6 and also April 30, for a launch attempt.
In 2024, the space agency set April 2026 as the longest deadline for the launch of Artemis II, after which the mission would be considered delayed.
This is not the first time an Artemis rocket has had problems. The SLS rocket for the Artemis I mission headed back to the vehicle assembly building more than once in 2022, sooner rather than later takes off and completes its unmanned test flight around the moon later that year.
These cumulative delays led NASA to announce a major overhaul of the Artemis program with the agency now targeting annual launches, potentially drop SpaceX and Boeing from their mission plans, and targeting two lunar landings in 2028.
NASA claims that returning to the moon for the first time since the Apollo era will be an important test of their systems before attempting a future crewed mission to Mars and beyond.
