GoKawiilKENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Florida—The two-day countdown for the launch of NASA’s Artemis II mission began Monday evening, with clocks timed for the first of six opportunities in early April to send a crew of four astronauts around the far side of the Moon.
Liftoff from Launch Complex 39B at Kennedy Space Center in Florida is scheduled for a two-hour launch window opening at 6:24 pm EDT (22:24 UTC) on Wednesday. NASA has backup launch opportunities each day through Monday, April 6, or else the mission will have to wait until the end of the month.
Mission managers said Monday that all systems were looking good for launch this week. The weather forecast is favorable, with an 80 percent chance of acceptable conditions for liftoff Wednesday. The only weather concern at the launch site in Florida is a low chance of rain showers and cloud cover that could present a risk of lightning. But with a two-hour launch window, there should be plenty of time to wait out any scattered storms.
John Honeycutt, chair of NASA’s mission management team, told reporters Monday that there were “no showstoppers” for launch on Wednesday. Ground teams powered up the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft for final checkouts early Tuesday, setting the stage for loading super-cold liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen into the rocket Wednesday morning.
Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch, and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen will strap into their seats inside the Orion crew capsule on Tuesday afternoon. If all goes according to plan, the 322-foot-tall (98-meter) rocket will ignite its four RS-25 main engines and twin solid rocket boosters at the opening of the launch window to propel itself off the launch pad with 8.8 million pounds of thrust.
Starting to feel real
There are several key milestones that the rocket, spacecraft, and launch team must get through before Artemis II can head for the Moon. Chief among these is fueling the SLS rocket, which hasn’t proven easy during past countdowns. Leaky seals have been a persistent problem for the SLS rocket, causing numerous delays during preparations for the rocket’s first test flight in 2022.