New Delhi: NASA has rolled out the Artemis II moon rocket to the Launch Pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida on 20 March. The teams are preparing
for the launch attempt on Wednesday 1 April, with additional launch opportunities available through the first week of April, as well as the last day of the month. The journey to the launch pad from the vehicle assembly building took about four hours, with the rocket transported on board the crawler-transporter over a distance of about 6.4 km along the crawlerway.
At the Vehicle Assembly Building, the engineers refreshed and restested several systems on the rocket, activated a new set of flight termination system batteries, replaced other batteries on the upper stage, core stage, and solid rocket boosters, and charged the launch abort system batteries of the Orion spaceship. The engineers also replaced a seal on the core stage liquid oxygen seal line, and reassembled and retested the oxygen tail service mast umbilical plate, to confirm a tight seal at the interface.
Problems with Artemis II mission
NASA first rolled out the Artemis II rocket to the launch pad in January, and conducted wet dress rehearsals on 3 February as well as 19 February. There were helium leaks discovered during the rehearsals, that could not be fixed at the launchpad, which is why NASA opted to roll back the rocket to the Vehicle Assembly Building in February. NASA will not be conducting another wet dress rehearsal before the launch attempt. The Artemis II mission will see Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Grover, Mission Specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen go on a 10 day lunar flyby, the first since the Apollo Programme over 50 years ago. Interested readers can track the entire Artemis II mission live from their home through the Artemis Real-time Orbit Website (AROW) by NASA, that includes live telemetry from the Orion spaceship.
