NASA's Artemis II rocket rolls to launch pad in final bid to meet April deadline

NASA's Artemis II moon rocket is back on the move, as the space agency prepares the spacecraft for a potential launch before its April deadline.

This is the second time that the 322-foot-tall (98 meters) Space Launch System and Orion capsule stack has rolled out to the launchpad this year, the first having taken place on Jan. 17. But following two wet dress rehearsals and two leaks, NASA decided to wheel the rocket back to the Vehicle Assembly Building for repairs.

If the fixes have worked as planned, the rocket could blast off as early as April 1. It will take the mission's four-person crew, who went into quarantine this week, on a 10-day flight around the moon and back.

Embarking from the Vehicle Assembly Building to Launch Pad 39B at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the 11 million-pound (5 million kilograms) stack is trundling along at a speed of about 1 mph (1.6 km/h along a 4-mile (6.4 kilometers) route.

The journey is set to take up to 12 hours, with the trip delayed for several hours due to high winds, according to NASA.

Once at the pad, the rocket will undergo a series of final tests, including a wet dress rehearsal to fill the rocket with hydrogen fuel and oxygen oxidizer. If all of these hurdles are cleared, NASA will announce a date within the April window, which includes April 1 to 6 and also April 30, for a launch attempt.

In 2024, the space agency set April 2026 as the furthest deadline for the launch of Artemis II, after which the mission will be considered delayed.

This isn't the first time an Artemis rocket has had issues. The SLS rocket for the Artemis I mission went back to the Vehicle Assembly Building more than once in 2022, before eventually taking off and completing its uncrewed test flight around the moon later that year.

These cumulative delays led NASA to announce a major overhaul of the Artemis program with the agency now aiming for annual launches, potentially dropping SpaceX and Boeing from its mission plans, and targeting two lunar landings in 2028.

NASA claims its return to the moon for the first time since the Apollo era will be a vital test of its systems before attempting a future crewed mission to Mars and beyond.