The first crewed moon mission in more than 50 years will launch just two weeks from now, if all goes according to plan.
NASA announced today (Feb. 20) that it’s targeting March 6 for the liftoff of Artemis 2, which will send four astronauts on a trip around the moon. No people have been beyond low Earth orbit since December 1972, when the Apollo 17 crew returned from lunar realms.
Today’s announcement came a day after the successful completion of Artemis 2’s wet dress rehearsal (WDR) — a two-day-long practice run of the major operations that precede launch — at Pad 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida.
It was the second WDR for Artemis 2. The first was terminated early on Feb. 2, due to a leak of liquid hydrogen (LH2) spotted during the fueling of the mission’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. The leak occurred at an interface with the tail service mast umbilical (TSMU), a line that delivers propellant to the SLS from its mobile launch tower.
An LH2 leak in that same spot plagued the prelaunch campaign for Artemis 1, contributing to significant delays. That mission was originally slated to launch in spring 2022 but didn’t get off the ground until November of that year. Artemis 1 ended up being successful, however, sending an uncrewed Orion capsule to lunar orbit and back to Earth.
NASA officials have said that they learned a great deal from Artemis 1, and that experience apparently paid off during Artemis 2’s second WDR. Mission teams replaced two seals at the TSMU interface after the first fueling run, then assessed that fix on Feb. 12 by partially filling the SLS’ LH2 tanks.
The new seals worked during that “confidence test,” and they held again on Thursday. The WDR team poured 730,000 gallons (2.76 million liters) of cryogenic LH2 and liquid oxygen into the tanks of SLS’ core and upper stages, and both propellants stayed in their proper place.
There was “really no leakage to speak of,” Artemis 2 Launch Director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson said during today’s press conference. “It really performed well.”
The team checked all the other major WDR boxes as well, putting Artemis 2’s SLS, Orion capsule and ground equipment through their paces. The mission team ran the countdown clock all the way down to T-33 seconds, then recycled and did it again, getting to T-29 seconds — and they still had time left in the simulated launch window after that.
“Obviously, yesterday was really a really good day for us,” John Honeycutt, chair of the Artemis 2 Mission Management Team, said during today’s press conference. “I felt the test went extremely well.”
There’s still some work to do before Artemis 2 can be officially cleared for liftoff, however. For example, mission teams still need to install two “contingency pad access” trusses on SLS’ mobile launch tower, which will allow them to test the mission’s flight termination system (FTS) at Pad 39B.
This is a new capability: During Artemis 1, the SLS-Orion stack had to be rolled back to KSC’s cavernous Vehicle Assembly Building for the required prelaunch FTS test.
That work should take a few days, Blackwell-Thompson said. And the Artemis 2 team still needs to conduct a comprehensive flight readiness review, which is expected to take place toward the end of next week.
Artemis 2 will send NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and the Canadian Space Agency‘s Jeremy Hansen on a roughly 10-day trip around the moon and back to Earth.
The quartet did not participate in this week’s WDR, but three of them were present for the proceedings.
“I was able to speak a little bit with with Reid Wiseman, with Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen. They’re all very, very excited,” Glaze said. “They are really getting a lot of anticipation for a potential launch in March.”
“I think a lot of folks up to this point have said, you know, we watched Artemis 1, and it went significantly beyond when we first started talking about it,” she added. “But this is really getting real, and it’s time to get serious and start getting excited.”
All four Artemis 2 crewmates will go into quarantine — a common preflight safety measure — later today at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Glaze said. They’ll return to KSC about five days before liftoff, staying in quarantine at the launch site.
Artemis 2’s upcoming launch window runs from March 6 through March 9 and also includes March 10. If NASA can’t hit those dates, we’ll have a wait a few additional weeks: The next window features target dates of April 1, April 3-6 and April 30.
