Artemis 2 could launch as soon as February

WASHINGTON — NASA’s Artemis 2 mission around the moon could launch as soon as early February, as both agency officials and the mission’s four-person crew say they are ready for the flight.

At a Sept. 23 briefing at the Johnson Space Center, officials reaffirmed the current schedule, which calls for a launch no later than April 2026, but could take place as soon as February.

Lakiesha Hawkins, acting deputy associate administrator in NASA’s Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, for the first time offered a specific no-earlier-than launch date: Feb. 5.

“Of course, there will be more work in order to nail that down,” she said. Launch periods for Artemis 2 last four to eight days each month, with most February opportunities in the evening.

Hawkins said there is pressure to accelerate Artemis 2, which has already slipped from 2024 because of Orion spacecraft issues, including unexpected heat shield erosion seen on Artemis 1 in 2022.

“The message has been clear to us that this administration asked us to acknowledge that we are indeed in what people have commonly called a second space race,” she said. “There is a desire for us to return to the surface of the moon and to be the first to return to the surface of the moon.”

“NASA’s objective, though, is to do so safely,” she added. “We have done assessments and we have worked together as a team to ensure that the progress that we are making is moving in an accelerated fashion, but that we are doing everything that we can to also ensure this mission is successful and that we return the crew back home safely.”

Hawkins said she does not expect launch preparations will be affected by a potential government shutdown at the start of the new fiscal year Oct. 1. Artemis has previously received exemptions to continue work during shutdowns on safety grounds. “We anticipate in this particular case that this is obviously very safety-critical,” she said, “and we anticipate being able to request and being able to continue to move forward on Artemis 2.”

Hardware preparations

Other officials at the briefing said there are no showstoppers to a launch early next year as workers prepare the Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System rocket.

“The SLS rocket is pretty much stacked and ready to go,” said Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, Artemis launch director at Kennedy Space Center. The final major element, the Orion stage adapter, is scheduled for installation this week.

Orion is completing processing, including installation of its launch abort system. That work should wrap up within a week, after which the spacecraft will move to the Vehicle Assembly Building to be mounted on SLS.

The integrated SLS/Orion will then undergo months of testing in the VAB and at Launch Complex 39B, including a practice countdown with the Artemis 2 crew and a wet dress rehearsal where the rocket is fueled and counts down to T-29 seconds.

Blackwell-Thompson said hydrogen leak issues that delayed Artemis 1 have been resolved with hardware changes and lessons learned about managing flow rates and pressure. “We learned an awful lot with Artemis 1,” she said.

Mission profile

Artemis 2 will be a roughly 10-day mission, beginning with a day in an elliptical Earth orbit to test Orion life support systems and perform a proximity operations demonstration, maneuvering to within 10 meters of the SLS upper stage.

The spacecraft will then conduct a translunar injection burn, placing it on a free-return trajectory around the moon before reentering Earth’s atmosphere and splashing down in the Pacific Ocean west of San Diego.

Crew readiness

At a Sept. 24 briefing, the four American and Canadian astronauts flying on Artemis 2 said they were ready for the mission.

“There is no frustration in what we would perceive, from the outside looking in, as delays,” said mission commander Reid Wiseman. He said the crew has closely followed the vehicle’s progress and believes “now is the right time to fly.”

He added, though, that preparations are not being rushed. “This is a test mission. We just do not anchor on dates. We’re going to launch when this vehicle is ready, when this team is ready.”

The crew also announced the Orion spacecraft’s name: Integrity.

Wiseman said the name emerged from discussions among the four primary crew members and two backups, inspired by the core values of NASA and the Canadian Space Agency, among other factors.

“Then we looked out at what is going on with Artemis 2, what do we want this to be,” he said, citing both enabling a future Artemis 3 landing and providing “peace and hope for all humankind.”

“So we’re going to fly around the moon in the spacecraft Integrity,” he said.