NASA hopes to launch Artemis 2 astronauts to the moon next month, but it's going to be tight: 'This is not a rush'

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA is about to roll its massive new Artemis 2 moon rocket out to the launch pad.

Artemis 2's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket is expected to roll out of the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) here at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) tomorrow morning (Jan. 17) around 7 a.m. EST (1200 GMT). It's roughly 4 miles (6.4 kilometers) from the VAB to Launch Complex-39B, which the rocket will traverse over eight to 10 hours aboard the agency's Crawler-Transporter 2 vehicle.

Once its journey to the pad is complete, mission managers and ground teams will conduct a series of systems integrations and tests to ready SLS for a fueling and countdown simulation called a "wet dress rehearsal," which is currently scheduled for Feb. 2. If everything goes according to plan, NASA hopes to get Artemis 2 off the ground during the mission's first launch window, which opens Feb. 6 — but that is a very big "if."

Artemis 2 is the second mission of NASA's Artemis program, after Artemis 1, which successfully sent an uncrewed Orion to lunar orbit and back in late 2022. The coming mission will be the first to fly astronauts to the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972. Apollo 17 put astronauts down on the lunar surface, but Artemis 2 will not do so; its four crewmembers will loop around the moon on a "free-return trajectory" and come back to Earth after about 10 days in space.

Those astronauts — NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and the Canadian Space Agency's Jeremy Hansen — will fly farther from Earth than any humans in history, observing the far side of the moon and testing Orion's systems to ensure the spacecraft can sustain a crew in space. Their mission will set the stage for Artemis 3, which will perform the program's first crewed lunar landing in 2027 or 2028, if all goes to plan.

NASA's goal to perform Artemis 2's wet dress rehearsal on Feb. 2, then turn the pad over for a launch as early as Feb. 6 would basically mean every single thing needs to go right. And that's far from guaranteed. During Artemis 1, for example, SLS experienced fueling issues, hydrogen leaks and ground infrastructure process failures that delayed launch for over six months.

As Artemis 2 preparations proceed, NASA is also gearing up for the launch of SpaceX's Crew-12 mission to the International Space Station (ISS), after cutting Crew-11 short and bringing its four astronauts home early in the agency's first-ever medical evacuation from space.

Crew-11's recent departure from the ISS leaves a skeleton crew of only three, and an increasing impetus for NASA to launch their replacements as soon as possible. NASA is currently targeting Feb. 15 for the launch of Crew-12, which puts it just after the end of the first Artemis 2 launch window.

Coordinating the preparations for both missions, though, is not something NASA officials see as a conflict. "This is not a rush," said Jeff Radigan, NASA's lead flight director for Artemis 2, during a pre-rollout press conference today (Jan. 16).

"It's not prudent for us to put both those [missions] up at the same time, but we also have to ensure that both of them are ready to go," he added. "We may run into an issue, and the last thing we want to do is make a decision too early and then lose an opportunity."

Whether Artemis 2 will be ready to fly at any point in its February window — which features possible launch opportunities on Feb. 6, 7, 8, 10 and 11 — can only be determined once it's at the pad and the checkouts are done.

"I think wet dress is really the driver to that and how it goes. It would be hard to say that you could not [have SLS ready to launch in February]," Artemis 2 Launch Director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson said during today's press conference.

John Honeycutt, the Artemis 2 mission management team chair, stressed that NASA will not bite off more than it can chew during prep for these two crewed missions.

"We're going to do our job to be ready to go fly," Honeycutt said today. "I'm not going to tell the agency that I'm ready to go fly until I think we're ready to go fly."

If Artemis 2 misses the February window, NASA will reload for another try in March (with opportunities on March 6, 7, 8, 9 and 11) or April (April 1, 3, 4, 5 and 6).