NASA announced Friday that it is targeting March 6 for the launch of Artemis II, the first crewed mission to the vicinity of the moon in more than 50 years, after engineers successfully completed a critical fueling test of the Space Launch System rocket on Thursday evening at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The announcement followed a press conference in which Lori Glaze, NASA's Moon to Mars program manager, confirmed that the wet dress rehearsal — a full simulation of launch-day fueling and countdown operations — had gone as planned. "Following that successful wet dress yesterday, we're now targeting March 6 as our earliest launch attempt," Glaze said, while cautioning that pad work, data analysis, and a flight readiness review still need to be completed.
A Fix That Held
Thursday's rehearsal was a make-or-break moment for the mission. During the first wet dress rehearsal on February 2, engineers detected a hydrogen leak at the tail service mast umbilical — a three-story structure that routes liquid hydrogen from the mobile launcher into the SLS core stage. The same interface had caused problems during the Artemis I launch campaign in 2022.
Technicians replaced two seals in the area and swapped out a clogged ground support equipment filter after a partial fueling test on February 12 revealed restricted hydrogen flow. During Thursday's rehearsal, teams loaded more than 700,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen into the rocket's two stages without exceeding the ground safety limit for hydrogen gas concentration — a sharp contrast to the earlier attempt. NASA declared the rehearsal complete at 10:16 p.m. EST, ending the countdown as planned at T-minus 29 seconds.
Crew Enters Quarantine
The four Artemis II astronauts — NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, along with Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen — were set to enter quarantine late Friday in Houston. The roughly 14-day isolation period, known as the Health Stabilization Program, limits the crew's exposure to illness before launch.
The 10-day mission will send the crew on a free-return trajectory around the moon aboard the Boeing-built SLS rocket and Lockheed Martin-built Orion spacecraft. It will mark the first time humans have traveled beyond low Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972, and the crew is expected to pass roughly 5,000 nautical miles beyond the far side of the moon — farther from Earth than any human has ever ventured.
Glaze noted that the March launch window includes backup dates should the March 6 attempt not proceed. "We need to successfully navigate all of those but assuming that happens, it puts us in a very good position," she said.
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