Nasa is set to launch four astronauts on a 10-day flight around the moon, marking the most ambitious US space mission in decades and a major step toward returning humans to the lunar surface before China’s first crewed landing.
The Artemis II crew of NASA astronauts Christina Koch, Victor Glover and Reid Wiseman and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen donned their flight suits and arrived at the launchpad ahead of liftoff scheduled as early as 6.24pm EDT (23.24 Irish time) from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
NASA mission managers had polled “go” to launch the Artemis II mission’s towering, 322-foot (98 m) Space Launch System rocket topped with the astronauts’ Orion crew capsule. Clouds rolled over Florida’s Space Coast midday, though weather forecasts remain 80 per cent favorable for launch.
The launch could occur as late as 8.24pm in Wednesday’s two-hour launch window, just one pad away from where the last moon-bound astronauts of the US Apollo program lifted off more than half a century ago.
The astronauts had arrived in Florida from Houston on Friday.
They awoke on Wednesday about nine hours before launch for breakfast, a weather briefing and pre-mission preparations, before sharing farewell words with family ahead of their 2pm drive to the launchpad, escorted by armoured vehicles.
They had been in a two-week quarantine leading up to liftoff and spent time with their families over the weekend at the Kennedy Space Center’s beach house, a spot where astronauts rest before blasting off into space.
They have been in a two-week quarantine leading up to liftoff and spent time with their families over the weekend at the Kennedy Space Center’s beach house, a spot where astronauts rest before blasting off into space.
NASA on Wednesday morning started filling the SLS core stage with 733,000 gallons of super-cooled propellant that powers the rocket’s four RS-25 engines.
The pickup truck-sized engines, built by Aerojet Rocketdyne, had powered NASA’s Space Shuttle for decades.
“Everything is going very well right now,” assistant launch director Jeremy Graeber said of the SLS core stage fueling process.
Weather conditions appeared favourable for an on-time liftoff, with only a 20 per cent chance of souring within the agency’s two-hour launch window on Wednesday.
If the weather worsens and triggers a scrub, NASA could try again to launch as soon as Friday and until April 6th, after which it would wait until April 30th for its next opportunity.
“Certainly all indications are right now, we are in excellent, excellent shape as we get into count,” launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson told reporters on Monday.
The launch had originally been planned for as early as February 6th, and then March 6th, until a pesky hydrogen leak prompted NASA to roll the rocket back to its vehicle assembly building for scrutiny.
The Artemis II mission will send the crew on a winding, nearly 10-day journey around the moon and back, sending them some 252,000 miles (406,000 km) into space – the farthest humans have ever travelled.
The current record for the farthest spaceflight at roughly 248,000 miles is held by the three-man crew of the Apollo 13 lunar mission in 1970, which was beset by technical problems after an oxygen tank exploded and was unable to land on the moon as planned.
Humans have not left Earth’s orbit since the final Apollo mission in 1972.
NASA launched its first Artemis mission without crew in 2022, sending the gumdrop-shaped Orion spacecraft on a similar path around the moon and back.
