The Artemis 2 rocket that will send astronauts around the moon is back on the pad, and it could launch in less than two weeks.
NASA rolled Artemis 2’s towering Space Launch System (SLS) rocket to Launch Complex-39B (LC-39B) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida on Friday.
SLS and its Orion crew capsule arrived at the pad at 11:21 a.m. EDT (1521 GMT) on Friday. First motion occurred earlier that same morning at 12:20 a.m. EDT (0420 GMT), with SLS, Orion and their mobile launch platform (MLP) secured atop NASA’s crawler-transporter 2 vehicle for the 4-mile (6.4 kilometers) trek.
NASA is still targeting the beginning of the next launch window, which opens April 1, for liftoff of Artemis 2. If mission managers are forced to push past that date for any reason, opportunities exist through April 6, with another window opening April 30.