NASA tentatively gave the thumbs-up for Artemis 2 to shoot for the Moon again, starting on April 1 at 6:24 p.m. Eastern (2224 GMT) for a two-hour period.
Lori Glaze, NASA’s acting associate administrator of the exploration systems development mission directorate, said the teams polled “go” for launch – assuming completion of work at the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC). If all remains on track, the Space Launch System (SLS) will roll out on March 19.
Opportunities for launch are every day from April 1 to April 6; NASA added a new launch timing on April 2 that was not there previously. Should SLS not launch in early April for any reason, another set of launch opportunities opens April 30 (the end of the window has not been announced yet), and then monthly on an indefinite basis.
The agency also gave a small update on the Gateway program that features the Canadarm3 funded by the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and being built by MDA Space – more on that later in the article.
A very brief summary
The historic Artemis 2 mission, which includes CSA astronaut Jeremy Hansen as well as science and hardware from Canada, aims to send four astronauts around the moon. NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch are also on board. This will be the first human moon mission since a landing, Apollo 17, in 1972.
The mission has been delayed several times since crew was announced in 2023 due to various development items – as well as findings from the Artemis 1 mission concerning the heat shield – but the 2026 campaign was supposed to see a liftoff in February. SpaceQ attended the rollout of the rocket in mid-January at KSC. Results from the first of two wet dress rehearsals, however, pushed the liftoff window into March.
After the second wet dress rehearsal, an issue with helium flow in the SLS arose. To troubleshoot, and to swap out limited-life items like the batteries, NASA elected to roll the rocket back to the VAB on Feb. 25. The rocket has been there for a few weeks, and NASA announced on Thursday (March 12) the results of a flight readiness review (FRR) determining how the fixes have gone so far, and how the mission stands in terms of an April liftoff.
The flight readiness review
These were some of the points raised about the FRR at the press conference.
- The crew participated in the FRR and Wiseman – speaking on their behalf as commander – told NASA yesterday morning the crew was ready to fly.
- John Honeycutt, manager of NASA’s SLS program, said the large-scale goal of any FRR is “telling the risk story and it’s all about how you communicate risk.” He also quoted Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya, saying an FRR also aims to examine all scenarios in which something bad can happen – in other words, that NASA aims to anticipate any issue at any time.
- Speaking to the risk posture of Artemis 2, Honeycutt said this: a mature program would have a 1 in 50 chance of a fully successful mission, while Artemis 2 – the second in the program, and first crewed – is better than 1 in 2, due to work by the team and the fact that the Artemis 1 uncrewed mission bought down some of the risk. “If you look at the data over time, over the lifespan of building new rockets, the data would show you that one out of two is successful. You’re only successful 50 percent of the time. I think we’re in a much better position than that.”
- Honeycutt noted a solid rocket booster problem that affected a recent United Launch Alliance Vulcan launch, USSF-87, but said NASA (speaking with ULA) examined the issue and there should be no effect on the Northrop Grumman-made SRBs for Artemis 2. Northrop Grumman also had an anomaly in 2025 during a ground test for a newer SLS design, and NASA did a similar assessment for Artemis 2 following that test, Honeycutt added.
- Shawn Quinn, manager of NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems program, said the helium flow issue was resolved by removing the part at fault and putting it into a lab X-ray, where it was revealed that the seal blocked helium flow through a quick-disconnect valve. They have modeled and changed out that area and it is successfully implemented, he said, adding that they took out the faulty seal and they reinforced another seal to avoid it being inadvertently moved from where it is supposed to be.
- Glaze hinted that there is no anticipation of a new wet dress rehearsal – Artemis 2 has done two now – once the SLS is at the pad. “In our opinion, there’s not a lot more to be gained from that . . . the next time we tank the vehicle will be when we’re attempting launch.”
Readers should also remember that there have been some big changes at NASA since Artemis 2’s first rollout to the pad, which form a bit of a backdrop to the press conference. The agency saw the selection of Jared Isaacman as administrator in December 2025 – after the second nomination for Isaacman, since the first was withdrawn by the Trump administration and then reinstated. (Why is a long story, but it’s covered here at CNN.)
Isaacman has widely been perceived as lending more energy and direction to the agency, which was without a permanent administrator for nearly a year since the Trump administration took office in January 2025. That said, there have been some pressing issues at NASA discussed in the last few weeks with implications for Artemis.
- Two senior managers in space operations and commercial space at NASA left their positions in the wake of the Boeing Starliner investigation report released Feb. 20 that reclassified the Crew Flight Test of 2024-25 into a more serious incident, either as a Type A incident or a high-visibility close call. The report also pointed out management flaws at NASA and Boeing. CSA astronaut Joshua Kutryk had been assigned to Starliner-1, the first operational mission with astronauts. Boeing is instead running another uncrewed Starliner test (its third) to the International Space Station at some point, and most of Starliner-1’s crew has been reassigned; Kutryk’s flight assignment has not yet been discussed. While commercial space is of course a different program than Artemis, the safety practices have implications for all crewed spaceflights – but Isaacman emphasized the agency will do better.
- A week later, Isaacman helmed another big press conference – this one announcing sweeping changes to Artemis that aims to speed things up while adding more testing, since the Trump administration is worried about China getting to the moon first. Artemis 3 is no longer a landing mission, but a test of a Human Landing System (either SpaceX’s or Boeing’s) in low Earth orbit in 2027, while the moon-landing attempt would be either Artemis 4 or Artemis 5 – both scheduled in 2028.
- The NASA Office of the Inspector General released a report earlier this week with a broad discussion about Artemis lunar landing missions. While discussing the report in detail is beyond the scope of this article, the risk posture NASA discussed at the press conference yesterday arose from what the OIG estimated: a loss of crew threshold of 1 in 40 for lunar operations, and 1 in 30 for all Artemis missions.
Gateway’s status
The agency also provided a brief update about the lunar Gateway, the planned orbiting space station at the moon, that would use Canadarm3 for robotic servicing.
As a very quick background, it has been an uncertain year for the Gateway project. The skinny budget from the Trump administration for NASA’s fiscal 2026 – released in May 2025 – initially proposed removing Gateway altogether. Days later, MDA Space had a quarterly call in which officials emphasized the skinny budget is a proposal and that there are other uses of the arm, if necessary.
In July, the U.S. “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” was signed with several provisions for the Artemis program, including $2.6 billion USD ($3.56B) in overall future development funds allotted to develop Gateway – based on an amendment initiated by Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), whose constituents include NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The skinny budget proposal had also included numerous cuts to NASA overall, especially in science. Most of that funding was restored by the time the agency’s fiscal 2026 budget was finalized in the NASA Authorization Act of 2026 passed on March 4. Gateway is not mentioned specifically in the act, although it does say NASA should work on “establishing initial elements of a permanent lunar outpost by 2030, to ensure a sustained American presence in space and enable the next steps in Mars exploration.” Glaze was asked about details of Gateway during the briefing. Her response, essentially, was this: “The new architecture for the Artemis program is focused on standardizing our transportation to and from the moon. There’s nothing in there that says anything about what is anticipated for any other parts of our program. We continue to execute on the other parts.”