NASA Artemis rocket launch: Mission to send astronauts around the moon and back delayed - when is historic liftoff?
NASA is poised to send astronauts around the moon and back for the first time in more than 50 years.
The space agency's Artemis II mission will take the crew further than humans have ever ventured in space before. The mission was aiming for an 8 February take-off, but it has now been moved back to at least March after a liquid hydrogen leak during a practice launch.
Artemis is NASA's lunar exploration programme. It aims to return humans to the moon for the first time since the last lunar landing in December 1972, which was the last mission of the Apollo programme.
The Artemis missions are part of NASA's long-term plans to build a space station - called Lunar Gateway - where astronauts will be able to live and work and prepare for missions to Mars. During the 10-day mission, the crew on Artemis II will test life support, navigation and communication systems to confirm everything operates as it should in deep space.
Many of these tests will be completed while the capsule is still in the Earth's orbit, so that the astronauts are closer to home in the event of anything going wrong. The capsule will then enter Earth's high orbit where the crew will manually pilot Orion before control is handed back to controllers at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
The astronauts will then spend four days circling the moon, travelling approximately 4,600 miles beyond its far side before returning to Earth and splashing down in the Pacific Ocean. How successful the mission is will be critical in bringing NASA one step closer to landing astronauts on the moon, the goal of Artemis III.
This third stage is currently aimed to launch in mid-2027. The original launch date was 6 February, but it was initially pushed back two days because a bitter cold spell in Florida delayed the wet dress rehearsal, which simulates the countdown sequence to catch any snags or issues before flight.
The wet dress rehearsal began on 2 February and was expected to last two days, seeing NASA teams practice loading and removing more than 700,000 gallons of super-cold fuel. But the testing was cut short due to a liquid hydrogen leak.
Artemis II has two launch windows in March and April, carefully timed by NASA. With the 8 February launch called off, the mission could take place on the following dates.
- 6,7,8,9,11 March
- 1,3,4,5,6,30 April