NASA counted down to T-minus 29 seconds tonight during a rehearsal for a historic launch that could send astronauts around the moon for the first time in more than half a century.
The run-through at Launch Complex 39B, at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, was known as a wet dress rehearsal because it involved filling up the propellant tanks on NASA’s Space Launch System — a 322-foot-tall rocket that made its debut during 2022’s uncrewed Artemis 1 mission.
The only major component that was missing at the launch pad was the crew. NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman, the commander for the Artemis 2 mission, said in a posting to X that he was watching the proceedings from Launch Control.
Once NASA reviews the results of the two-day rehearsal, mission managers will decide whether to green-light the Artemis 2 crew’s 10-day trip around the moon and back. NASA says liftoff could come as early as March 6.
This week’s simulated countdown provides an opportunity for NASA to check out the Space Launch System rocket, the Orion crew capsule and ground support systems in advance of the actual launch.
An initial rehearsal on Feb. 2 was stopped at roughly T-minus 5 minutes due to a liquid hydrogen leak. Engineers made repairs at the pad to clear the way for a replay of the rehearsal.
NASA had to pause this evening’s first countdown in its final minutes to deal with what it called a “booster avionics system voltage anomaly,” but the count resumed and proceeded as planned to T-minus 33 seconds. At that point the countdown was automatically paused and recycled to T-minus 10 minutes.
It took more than an hour to reconfigure the rocket’s fueling system for another terminal count. Then NASA’s launch team went through an even smoother second countdown, reached a scheduled stopping point at T-minus 29 seconds, and then concluded the rehearsal. A news briefing about the test is set for 11 a.m. ET (8 a.m. PT) on Friday.
The four crew members for Artemis 2 are expected to go into quarantine as soon as this week after almost three years of training. In addition to Wiseman, the crew includes NASA astronauts Christina Koch and Victor Glover, plus Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen.
Artemis 2’s flight plan calls for sending the astronauts on a figure-8 route around the moon and back. The trip will take them as far as 4,600 miles beyond the far side of the moon — farther out than any human has gone before.
Although Artemis 2 will be historic in its own right, the mission’s main purpose is to prepare the way for Artemis 3, which aims to land humans on the lunar surface for the first time since Apollo 17 in 1972. That mission is officially set for no earlier than mid-2027, but industry experts expect the schedule to slip.
Several companies headquartered in the Seattle area have a significant interest in the Artemis moon program. A facility in Redmond operated by L3Harris (previously known as Aerojet Rocketdyne) builds thrusters for the Orion spacecraft — and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture, based in Kent, is developing a Blue Moon lander that’s meant to put Artemis crews on the lunar surface starting in 2030. Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket is expected to send an uncrewed cargo version of its lander to the moon sometime in the next few months.
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