NASA is counting down to 29 seconds tonight during a training exercise for a historic launch that could send astronauts around the moon for the first time in more than half a century.
The process at Launch Complex 39B at Kennedy Space Center in Florida was known as a dress rehearsal because it involved filling propellant tanks on NASA’s Space Launch System — a 322-foot rocket that debuted during the uncrewed Artemis 1 mission in 2022.
The only major component that was missing on the launch pad was the crew. NASA astronaut Reed Wiseman, Artemis 2 mission commander, said in a post that he was monitoring the actions from launch control.
Once NASA reviews the results of the two-day exercise, mission managers will decide whether to greenlight the Artemis 2 crew’s 10-day flight around the moon and back. NASA says the launch could come as early as March 6.
This week’s simulated countdown gives NASA an opportunity to test the Space Launch System rocket, Orion crew capsule and ground support systems before the actual launch.
Initial exercises conducted on February 2 were halted at about 5 minutes due to a liquid hydrogen leak. Engineers repaired the platform to pave the way for the resumption of training.
NASA had to pause the first countdown of the evening in its final minutes to deal with an “augmentation avionics system voltage anomaly,” but the countdown started again and continued to T-minus 33 seconds as planned. At that point, the countdown was automatically stopped and cycled back to T-minus 10 minutes.
It took more than an hour to reconfigure the rocket’s fuel system for another final count. NASA’s launch team then performed a second, easier countdown, reaching the scheduled stopping point at T-minus 29 seconds, and then ended the exercise. A news conference about the trial is scheduled for Friday at 11 a.m. ET (8 a.m. PT).
The four Artemis 2 crew members are expected to enter quarantine this week after nearly three years of training. In addition to Weissman, the crew also includes NASA astronauts Christina Koch and Victor Glover, as well as Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen.
The flight plan for Artemis 2 calls for sending astronauts on a figure-8 path around the moon and back. The journey will take them 4,600 miles to the far side of the moon, farther than any human has ever gone before.
Although the Artemis 2 mission will be historic in its own right, the mission’s main purpose is to pave the way for the Artemis 3 mission, which aims to land humans on the moon for the first time since Apollo 17 in 1972. The mission has not been officially scheduled for before mid-2027, but industry experts expect the program to be delayed.
Several companies headquartered in the Seattle area have a keen interest in the Artemis Moon program. A facility operated by L3Harris (formerly Aerojet Rocketdyne) in Redmond is manufacturing propulsion engines for the Orion spacecraft – and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space project, based in Kent, is developing the Blue Moon lander, aiming to send an Artemis crew to the lunar surface starting in the 2030s. Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket is expected to send an unmanned cargo version of its lander to the moon. Sometime in the next few months.
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