CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.—NASA leadership confirmed on March 12 that they were targeting 6:24 p.m. on April 1 as the newest, earliest opportunity for Artemis II, humanity’s first manned mission around the moon in more than 50 years.
That decision to go was made after an extensive launch readiness review was conducted on the Space Launch System moon rocket and Orion spacecraft after it was brought back inside the Vehicle Assembly Building from the launch pad on Feb. 25.
Lori Glaze, acting deputy associate administrator for NASA’s Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, said at a briefing that the review included “extremely thorough discussions, very open, transparent” about the risks of the mission, the challenges the mission teams have faced and addressed, as well as work that remains.
The four astronauts flying the mission—NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen—had a chance to attend the review virtually from Houston, Texas.
She also said mission leaders were able to add 7:22 p.m. on April 2 as an extra possible launch date during the greater launch window between April 1 and April 6.
NASA was previously aiming for an early March liftoff, but after a dress rehearsal in late February, a problem with the flow of helium in the rocket’s upper stage was discovered that could only be fixed inside the assembly building.
Along with discovering and fixing that flow issue, ground teams replaced fuel line seals on the rocket, charged and replaced various batteries, including the Orion spacecraft’s launch abort system’s batteries, and provided the close-out crew another opportunity to practice the procedures for properly sealing the crew in the capsule.
The moonship is slated to return to its launch pad on March 19. Once there, ground teams will forgo another wet dress rehearsal.
The 50-hour run-through of pre-launch and launch day operations, which includes completely fueling the rocket with liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, has already been conducted twice. But Glaze said that after a long discussion, a third attempt would not happen.
“Every time we tank the vehicle, it takes a little bit of the life out of those tanks,” Glaze said. “We certainly want to test and always make sure that everything’s working. But, you know, we’ve now done a couple of wet dress rehearsals. We’ve exercised the team. We’ve exercised the hardware.
“I‘ll just tell you, from my perspective, when we tank the vehicle, the very next time, I would like it to be on a day that we could actually launch,” she said. ”I would like to do it on launch day, and if we are able to successfully fully tank the vehicle, I want to be able to poll ‘Go to launch.’ So that’s where we are at this point.”
The Artemis II mission was previously given a hard deadline to fly before the end of April 2026. The latest launch date opportunity officially listed is 6:06 p.m. on April 30.
While NASA officials have said that a potential launch window to fly the parameters of this particular mission around the moon can be found every month this year, officials shot down questions from the media asking to disclose any specific launch dates for May or beyond.
“Right now, we are solely focused on April,” Glaze said.
