NASA targets March 6 for Artemis II moonshot

With a successful fueling test behind them, NASA managers on Friday said the agency has a good shot at launching the Artemis II mission on March 6, sending four astronauts on a long-awaited trip around the moon.

Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen are expected to enter pre-flight medical quarantine Friday evening at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Assuming a two-day flight readiness review next week confirms all systems are "go" for launch, the astronauts will fly to the Kennedy Space Center on March 1 to begin final preparations and enjoy a bit of private time with their families.

They will be the first astronauts to be shot into space by a gargantuan SLS rocket, the most powerful operational launcher in the world. They will be the first to fly aboard an Orion deep space crew capsule and the first people to leave low-Earth orbit for a trip to the moon in more than half a century.

They will follow a free-return trajectory, looping around the far side of the moon and then heading back to Earth for a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. They will not go into orbit or land on the moon, but they will travel farther from Earth than anyone in human history, beating a distance record set by the Apollo 13  crew in 1971.

Getting through a second "wet dress rehearsal" countdown on Thursday marked a major step in that direction.

"Following that successful wet dress yesterday, we're now targeting March 6 as our earliest launch attempt," said Lori Glaze, manager of NASA's Moon-to-Mars Program. "I am going to caveat that. I want to be open, transparent with all of you that there is still pending work."

That work includes installing platforms at the launch pad to service batteries in the SLS rocket's self-destruct system, carrying out a detailed analysis of the wet dress rehearsal countdown and the comprehensive flight readiness review.

The practice countdown started Tuesday night and ended late Thursday after engineers successfully loaded the SLS rocket with more than 750,000 gallons of supercold liquid oxygen and hydrogen fuel. The team then carried out two problem-free runs through the last 10 minutes of the countdown, ending with a cutoff at T-minus 29 seconds as planned.

The smooth-running test stood in sharp contrast to an initial dress rehearsal earlier this month that was derailed by major hydrogen leaks during fueling.

Those leaks were detected in a cavity between the umbilical plates where 8-inch and 4-inch hydrogen lines enter the base of the SLS first stage. That cavity is purged with inert nitrogen gas during fueling and during the first practice run earlier this month, hydrogen concentrations close to NASA's 16 percent safety limit were noted.

Toward the end of the countdown, when the first stage hydrogen tank was being pressurized as it would be for launch, concentrations shot up to 90 percent.

Engineers replaced suspect seals where those fuel lines attach to the rocket and during the fueling operation on Thursday, concentrations never climbed above 1.6%.

"Obviously, yesterday was a really good day for us," said John Honeycutt, chairman of NASA's Artemis II mission management team. "I thought the test went extremely well."

Engineering teams "are off looking at the data," he said. "I met some of them this morning (and) so far, we don't have any indications of anything that we're worried about. But we're just getting started, so we'll go through that and see what the teams come up with."

King Charles reacts after former Prince Andrew's stunning arrest on his 66th birthday

Former Prince Andrew arrested after latest Epstein files revelations

Steel business owner on Trump's tariffs as world awaits Supreme Court decision