Space and National Technology

NASA is rolling its repaired 332‑foot Artemis II Space Launch System rocket back to Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39B Thursday night, targeting a crewed launch on April 1 at 6:24 p.m. EDT for a nine‑day flight around the Moon and back. Mounted on an Apollo‑era crawler, the rocket and mobile launch platform are making a 4‑mile, roughly 12‑hour trip from the Vehicle Assembly Building, after engineers fixed earlier hydrogen leaks and a high‑pressure helium pressurization problem in the upper stage traced to out‑of‑place seals in a quick‑disconnect fitting. Once on the pad, teams will reconnect fuel, power and data lines, with NASA saying the next loading of more than 750,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen and oxygen will be for the actual launch rather than another test. Commander Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen have entered pre‑flight medical quarantine and plan to arrive at Kennedy a week before liftoff, which would be the first crewed SLS/Orion mission and the first piloted Moon mission since Apollo in 1972, sending the crew farther from Earth than any humans have traveled if the launch is on time. The mission is a critical test of Orion’s propulsion, navigation, communications and life‑support systems ahead of planned lunar‑lander tests by SpaceX and Blue Origin and potential Moon‑landing missions later this decade.