NASA is targeting Friday, March 6 as the earliest possible launch date for the historic Artemis II mission, which will fly astronauts to the moon for the first time in five decades.
Agency officials announced the target date in a news conference on Feb. 20, following a successful “wet dress rehearsal” — a crucial test in which the Space Launch System (SLS) moon rocket is filled with fuel and taken most of the way through the launch countdown — completed on Thursday (Feb. 19).
“There’s a lot of forward work that remains,” Lori Glaze, NASA’s Moon to Mars program manager, said at the conference. “Including the post-wet-dress analyses, some significant work to be completed out at the [launch] pad… and a multi-day flight readiness review that will come up later next week.”
The second dress rehearsal did experience a communication issue early on, when the Launch Control Center lost contact with the crew on the ground. The team temporarily switched to backup communications to continue fueling before normal communications were restored.
