CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA’s Space Launch System rocket rolled out to its launch pad at Kennedy Space Center on Saturday, completing a 4-mile journey from the Vehicle Assembly Building in preparation for the first crewed lunar flight in more than half a century. A launch could come as early as February, pending a fueling test NASA must complete before announcing an official date. Thousands of space center workers and their families gathered before dawn to watch the rollout, joined by NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman and all four mission astronauts.
The Artemis II mission would put humans near the moon for the first time since Apollo 17 in 1972. The four-person crew will fly around the moon on a 10-day mission without landing; a lunar surface landing is planned for a subsequent Artemis flight.
“What a great day to be here,” said Reid Wiseman, the crew commander. “It is awe-inspiring.”
The crew and mission
The Artemis II crew consists of Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, Christina Koch — all experienced NASA astronauts — and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, a former fighter pilot awaiting his first spaceflight.
They would be the first people to travel to the moon since Apollo 17’s Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt made the journey in 1972, closing out the Apollo lunar-landing program. Twelve astronauts walked the lunar surface beginning with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in 1969. Four of those moonwalkers are still alive, according to the Associated Press; Aldrin, the oldest, turns 96 on Tuesday.
“They are so fired up that we are headed back to the moon,” Wiseman said. “They just want to see humans as far away from Earth as possible discovering the unknown.”
The rollout
The 322-foot (98-meter) rocket began its 1-mph (1.6-kph) crawl at daybreak and reached the pad by nightfall. The rocket and Orion crew capsule, weighing 11 million pounds (5 million kilograms) combined, made the move on a massive transporter used during the Apollo and shuttle eras and upgraded to carry the SLS rocket’s greater weight. The Vehicle Assembly Building the rocket departed was constructed in the 1960s to accommodate the Saturn V rockets that sent 24 astronauts to the moon during the Apollo program.
“This one feels a lot different, putting crew on the rocket and taking the crew around the moon,” said NASA’s John Honeycutt on the eve of the rollout.
Path to launch
Before confirming a launch date, NASA plans to conduct a fueling test on the pad in early February. “We’ve, I think, zero intention of communicating an actual launch date,” Isaacman told reporters, referring to the period before the fueling demonstration is complete.
The agency has only five days to launch in the first half of February before the window shifts to March, according to the Associated Press.
The first and only previous SLS launch, in November 2022, sent an empty Orion capsule into orbit around the moon. Heat shield damage and other capsule problems discovered during that test flight required extensive analyses and tests, pushing back the first crewed mission until now.