Artemis II astronauts arrive in Florida to prepare for launch to the moon
The Artemis II astronauts flew to the Kennedy Space Center Friday to prepare for the scheduled April 1 launch that will take them on a nearly 700,000-mile voyage around the moon and back, the first crew to leave Earth orbit since the final Apollo mission a half century ago.
Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen made the trip to Florida from the Johnson Space Center in Houston aboard sleek T-38 jets, setting down on the spaceport's three-mile-long runway around 2:10 p.m. Eastern Time.
"Hey, let's go to the moon!" exclaimed Wiseman, pumping his fists on the runway. "I think the nation and the world has been waiting a long time to do this again. And on behalf of myself, Victor, Christina, Jeremy, we are really pumped to go do this for this entire team.
"It has been a lot of work. It's been a great journey. It's great to be down here in the Florida. The vehicle looked amazing on the pad on the way in...It's just been an awesome start to this journey here at Kennedy."
Countdown clocks are expected to begin ticking at 4:44 p.m. EDT Monday, setting up a launch attempt at 6:24 p.m. Wednesday, the opening of a two-hour window.
The crew originally hoped to blast off in early February but the flight was delayed, first by hydrogen leaks detected during a fueling test, and then by problems pressurizing the rocket's upper stage propulsion system.
That problem could not be fixed at the launch pad, forcing engineers to haul the 322-foot-tall SLS rocket back to NASA's cavernous Vehicle Assembly Building. The issue was quickly traced to an out-of-place seal, and after recharging a variety of batteries in the rocket, the vehicle was hauled back out to the pad.
While tests and checkout indicated the rocket and Orion crew ship are ready to go, Wiseman said the crew was prepared for another delay if necessary.
"We are ready to launch," he told CBS News correspondent Mark Strassmann. "But we're also humans, trying to load millions of pounds of propellant onto a giant machine and send it to the moon. So it could very well be that we get to April 1st and we're behind (the) timeline and we're just not ready to launch...We are ready for that."
Because of the constantly changing positions of Earth and moon, along with lunar lighting and solar power requirements, the crew has until April 6 to get off the ground, or the flight will be delayed another four weeks or so when conditions will again be favorable.
It will be only the second flight of an SLS rocket, the most powerful operational launcher in the world, and the first with a crew on board. The same applies to the Orion crew ship at the top of the rocket.
Before the astronauts head for the moon, they will spend a full day in Earth orbit putting the Orion capsule through its paces, making sure its life support systems and other critical components are working properly.
"That one 24-hour orbit gives us time to check out all of (Orion's) environmental control, life support systems," Wiseman said in an earlier interview. "Can it scrub our carbon dioxide? Can it keep us alive? Can we drink water? Can we go to the bathroom? All those basic human functions that we did not test on Artemis I. We've got to go get those things tested before we press out to the moon."
Coming along for the ride: a small plush toy named "Rise" that will serve as the crew's informal zero gravity indicator, a contest-winning design submitted by a California second grader.
"The crew personally participated in selecting our buddy, our stowaway, to fly with us," Koch said. "And this little guy, Rise, really resonated with us because the theme is actually the Earthrise photo taken on Apollo 8, which is inspirational to all of us."
A small zippered pocket in the toy will carry a computer card with the names of nearly six million people around the world who responded to the agency's "send your name around the moon" campaign.
If all goes well, the Orion capsule will pass within about 4,100 miles of the moon on April 6, giving the astronauts an unprecedented view of the lunar far side as the moon's gravity bends the spacecraft's trajectory back toward Earth. Re-entry and splashdown in the Pacific Ocean near San Diego is targeted for April 10.
Artemis II will set the stage for a follow-on flight in Earth orbit next year when another crew will test rendezvous and docking procedures with commercial moon landers being built by SpaceX and Blue Origin.
If those flights go well, NASA hopes to launch one, and possibly two, lunar landing missions in 2028 before beginning work to build a moon base near the lunar south pole for long-duration stays on the surface.
"We have talked a lot about the exciting changes that have been announced and how we're approaching fulfilling our destiny in space and our journey to the moon and on to Mars," Koch said. "And the one thing the crew all agrees on is that it has been motivating. It has been inspiring, and it has fired us up."
