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NASA will provide an update on the Artemis 2 moon launch plans today (March 12), and you can watch it live.
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Artemis 2 will send four astronauts — NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, and the Canadian Space Agency’s Jeremy Hansen — on a 10-day trip around the moon and back home. It will be the first crewed mission beyond low Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972.
NASA had hoped to launch Artemis 2 last month and appeared to be doing so after successfully conduct a fuel test at KSC’s Pad 39B in late February.
Soon after that test, however, a problem emerged – a interruption of the flow of helium in the upper stage of Artemis 2’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. So the mission team rolled the Artemis 2 stack off Pad 39B and back to KSC’s cavernous Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) for repairs.
Last week, NASA announced that this work went wellpotentially keeping Artemis 2 on track for launch in next available windowwhich opens on April 1.
We’ll learn more during today’s update, which comes after the Artemis 2 flight readiness review is complete. Participants in the briefing are:
- Lori Glaze, Acting Assistant Administrator, Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate
- John Honeycutt, Leader, Artemis 2 Mission Management Team
- Shawn Quinn, Manager, Exploration Ground Systems Program
- Norm Knight, Director, Directorate of Air Operations
