NASA for the first time has announced launch windows for the first crewed spaceflight beyond Earth orbit in more than half a century.
The space agency on Friday said it is making final preparations for the Artemis II mission, which will send four astronauts around the moon and back as a precursor to Artemis III—humanity’s first mission to the treacherous lunar south pole, planned for as early as mid-2027.
If prelaunch activities go to plan, Artemis II could launch as soon as February 6, NASA said.
“We have important steps remaining on our path to launch and crew safety will remain our top priority at every turn, as we near humanity’s return to the Moon,” Lori Glaze, acting associate administrator for NASA’s Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, said in a statement Friday.
The next step in the prelaunch process will be the rollout of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion capsule—the two core vehicles for the Artemis II mission—from NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) to Launch Pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. That could happen as soon as Saturday and will be immediately followed by integration, testing, and a series of launch rehearsals.
Among the most critical will be a wet dress rehearsal, during which teams will load the SLS with more than 700,000 gallons of cryogenic liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen propellant and complete a mock countdown. NASA could require multiple wet dress rehearsals and will return SLS and Orion to the VAB for modifications if necessary.
A few days before launch, NASA will conduct a flight readiness review. After completing their final assessment, mission teams will set a launch date.
Due to the performance requirements of SLS and Orion, the mission’s precise trajectory, and other factors, launch windows will be open for approximately one out of every four weeks. There will be about four or five launch opportunities per window:
- January 31 to February 14 launch period: opportunities on February 6, 7, 8, 10, and 11
- February 28 to March 13 launch period: opportunities on March 6, 7, 8, 9, and 11
- March 27 to April 10 launch period: opportunities on April 1, 3, 4, 5, and 6
President Donald Trump, who created the Artemis program during his first term, in December issued an executive order that directed NASA to return Americans to the moon before his second term ends.
What Is Artemis II?
The Artemis program is essentially a follow-on to the Apollo program, created to reignite American lunar exploration and lay the groundwork for future crewed missions to Mars.
The SLS and Orion completed the uncrewed Artemis I mission in 2022, marking the vehicles’ first integrated flight test. Artemis II will be the first time they fly with crew. The approximately 10-day mission aims to validate that vehicle systems perform as expected in a real deep space environment. Throughout, astronauts will conduct evaluations and practice maneuvers considered critical for the Artemis III lunar landing.
The crew of four—NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen—will launch from Kennedy Space Center. During ascent, the SLS core stage engines will shut down, and the upper stage carrying Orion will separate.
The upper stage will orbit Earth twice to build up speed and ensure that life support, communications, navigation, and other systems work as expected. The crew will briefly test NASA’s Deep Space Network, on which mission control will rely to command Orion, communicate with the astronauts, and receive imagery while they are in lunar orbit. They will remove their crew survival system suits and spend most of the mission in plain clothes to test life support systems.
After reaching a high Earth orbit, Orion will separate from the upper stage, which will then be used as a target for a handling demonstration. The astronauts will pilot the capsule manually, using cameras and their own view from the windows to approach and back away from the upper stage. The test is intended to prepare for future rendezvous, proximity operations, and docking and undocking maneuvers that will occur during Artemis III, which will add a human landing system (HLS) and other spacecraft to the manifest.
A trans-lunar injection burn will place Orion on course for a four-day lunar flyby, with a figure eight-shaped trajectory that at its apex extends more than 230,000 miles from Earth. At that distance, astronauts will be able to see both the planet and its satellite.
On the way back, the crew will continue to evaluate system performance and practice emergency procedures. During what NASA calls a “free return,” Orion will rely on Earth’s gravity to pull it home naturally rather than using additional propulsion.
The mission will also host several scientific research experiments to study astronaut health, lunar geology, space weather, and cube-shaped miniature satellites.
Preparations Underway
As soon as Saturday, NASA will use its crawler-transporter 2 (CT-2)—the heaviest self-powered land vehicle on Earth, weighing about 6.6 million pounds unloaded—to move SLS and Orion to the pad at Kennedy. About the size of a baseball infield and capable of moving up to 18 million pounds of payload, the CT-2 will make the approximately 4-mile, 12-hour journey traveling at about 1 mph. NASA Spaceflight spotted the vehicle on the move this past weekend.
Prior to rollout, NASA said technicians discovered a misshapen cable in the flight termination system, which was replaced and tested over the weekend. Crews earlier this month also replaced a valve that experienced issues during a December countdown demonstration test. They have worked to fix leaking ground systems that are responsible for supplying Orion’s breathing air, the space agency said.
After rollout, technicians will connect ground support equipment such as electrical lines and propellant feeds. For the first time, they will power on the integrated system to check that the rocket, capsule, mobile launcher, and ground systems interact and function as expected.
Toward the end of January, NASA plans to conduct a wet dress rehearsal without astronauts on site. Across multiple “runs,” teams will test their ability to hold, resume, and reset the countdown clock during the terminal count—the final 10 minutes before launch.
NASA said it may require additional dress rehearsals or work on SLS and Orion back at the VAB before a flight readiness review. That would not break from precedent. Artemis I required four wet dress rehearsals and two trips back to the VAB during three months in 2022. Even then, launch attempts in late August and early September were scrubbed due to hydrogen leaks. The mission ultimately flew in mid-November.
“Right now, we could still make the February launch,” Glaze said during a January 6 meeting of the community-based Lunar Exploration Analysis Group forum, per SpaceNews. “We’ve got to have a lot of things go smoothly and go well. But it’s still feasible.”
Jared Isaacman, who was confirmed as NASA administrator in December, said the Artemis II schedule will not be impacted by the unprecedented early return of NASA and SpaceX’s Crew-11 mission, which the space agency elected to cut short due to a medical issue.
With the four Crew-11 astronauts set to return from the International Space Station on January 15—about one month ahead of schedule—NASA is considering moving up the subsequent Crew-12 mission to minimize downtime on the orbital laboratory.
“These would be totally separate campaigns at this point,” Isaacman said during a briefing Thursday. “We’re still evaluating what earlier dates would be achievable, if any, for Crew-12…There’s no reason to believe at this point in time that there would be any overlap that we’d have to deconflict for.”
