NASA’s Artemis II rocket rolls to the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Humanity’s return to the moon began Saturday morning before dawn at less than 1 mph.

That was the top speed NASA’s rocket for the Artemis II mission was able to hit during its ride atop the massive crawler that inched out of Kennedy Space Center’s Vehicle Assembly Building on its way Launch Pad 39-B.

It was a 4-mile trip mission managers hope will lead to 600,000 more, and one that will bring humans on a trip past the moon, a place in space they have not been in more than half a century.

“This vehicle, along with about 8.8 million pounds of thrust, is going to accelerate the Artemis II crew here to near Earth-escape velocity,” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, speaking alongside the four crew members that will be riding in the Orion spacecraft. “So just under 25,000 mph, farther into space than we’ve ever sent humans before, around the moon, back here safely to Earth.”

The Space Launch System rocket has flown once before on Artemis I back in 2022, and remains the most powerful rocket to ever put something into orbit. The Orion spacecraft, which its crew has named Integrity, will be flying with humans for the first time: NASA astronauts commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency and mission specialist Jeremy Hansen.

Speaking near the countdown clock at the press site, the quartet kept craning their necks to catch glimpses of the rocket as it crept along in the distance.

“We see this beautiful hardware behind us, the SLS, the Orion, but for this crew, we’ve been on this journey for about 2 1/2 years, and we just, we truly look at that and see teamwork,” Wiseman said, who said the quartet have traveled around the country where all the various parts of the rocket have come together.

Combined, SLS, Orion and its mobile launcher tops 11 million pounds sitting on the crawler-transporter 2, the tracked vehicle the size of a baseball infield that has been used for more than 50 years to ferry Apollo’s Saturn V rockets and space shuttles around the space center.

A few thousand KSC employees and their guests gathered before sunrise huddled up in blankets and hoodies as temperatures dropped into the 40s overnight. They lined the fields adjacent the crawler way to witness the event under an expanse of billowed clouds slowly lit by the rising sun.

The 322-foot-tall rocket emerged from the VAB at 7:05 a.m. lit up by floodlights, and ventured its first mile away over the next few hours as the skies cleared.

Artemis II could fly as soon as early February, but with launch windows also planned in early March and April.

Before that happens, though, NASA has to sign off on the rocket at the pad. A big part of that will be a wet dress rehearsal during which NASA will load the rocket and spacecraft with all the fuel needed on launch while running a test countdown.

“We’ll go through our terminal count, and we have a planned cut off at T-minus 29 seconds,” said Artemis Launch Director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson during a press conference Friday. “We’ll take some time after wet dress, we’ll review the data and then we’ll set up for our launch attempt.”

The first potential launch date is Feb. 6, with opportunities falling on Feb. 7, 8, 10 and 11. The next launch window would give options on March 6, 7, 8, 9 and 11. The last of the planned launch windows announced so far has options to fly on April 1, 3, 4, 5 and 6.

“Launch day will be pretty similar to wet dress. There’ll be two big differences. One is that we’re going to send the crew to the pad, and the other one is we’re not going to stop with 29 seconds,” she said.

The four astronauts are set for a 10-day journey that will take them first around the Earth for a day, then out past the moon and back flying farther away from Earth than any human has before, besting the 248,655 miles distance the crew of Apollo 13 hit during their flight in 1970.

“We’re making history,” said John Honeycutt, Artemis II mission management team chair. “This one feels a lot different, putting crew on the rocket and taking the crew around the moon. This is going to be our first step toward sustained lunar presence on the moon.”

The primary goal of Artemis II is to prove Orion can protect astronauts for future missions including Artemis III that looks to return humans to the lunar surface for the first time since the end of Apollo 17 in 1972.

“I’ve got one job, and it’s a safe return of Reid and Victor and Christina and Jeremy,” Honeycutt said. “I consider that a duty and a trust. And it’s one I intend to see through.”

One of the biggest concerns since the Artemis I mission was damage done to Orion’s heat shield upon reentry with the spacecraft enduring temperatures of 25,000 degrees Fahrenheit coming in at 5,000 mph.

“Anytime you got this much energy that you put into a system like this and a lot of dynamic events, you know, there is some risk. It’s our job to either understand those risks and make sure that we mitigate those in a way that we feel comfortable with and we can execute the mission,” he said. “That’s just part of cheating gravity.”

NASA has signed off on an altered return trajectory that they expect will avoid the fist-size holes that were created in the heat shield’s protective coating.

“I’m not going to tell the agency that I’m ready to go fly until I think we’re ready to go fly,” Honeycutt said.

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After the rocket is connected to the propellant and electrical lines at the pad, the astronauts later this week will do a walk-through before finally getting to the wet dress rehearsal.

Only then will NASA be able to set a launch date, but Blackwell-Thompson said February could still be doable.

“We need to get through wet dress. We need to see what lessons that we learn as a result of that, and that will ultimately lay out our pathway toward launch,” she said. “With a wet dress that is without significant issues. If everything goes to plan, then certainly there are opportunities within February that could be achievable.”

Isaacman pushed back on nailing down exactly when NASA will give the go for liftoff, but didn’t rule out February.

“We have, I think, zero intention of communicating an actual launch date until we get through wet dress. But look, that’s our first window, and if everything is tracking accordingly, I know the teams are prepared. I know this crew is prepared. We’ll take it,” he said.

“We like that answer,” Wiseman replied.

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