At 11:21 a.m. EDT on Friday, March 20, NASA’s Artemis II SLS (Space Launch System) rocket and Orion spacecraft arrived at Launch Pad 39B after an 11-hour journey from the Vehicle Assembly Building on the company’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
NASA’s crawler-transporter 2 started its 4-mile trek with the built-in SLS and Orion stacked on prime of the cellular launcher at 12:20 a.m. EDT. Moving at a most pace of simply 0.82 mph, the crawler carried the 322-foot-tall Moon rocket and spacecraft slowly and steadily towards the pad.
Now that the rocket is at Pad 39B, NASA groups are gearing up for the ultimate stretch of prelaunch preparations forward of launch as quickly as Wednesday, April 1. The early April launch window contains alternatives by Monday, April 6.
Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, and Mission Specialist Christina Koch of NASA, together with CSA’s (Canadian Space Agency) Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen will embark on a 10-day journey across the Moon and again.
As a part of a Golden Age of innovation and exploration, Artemis II is one other step towards new U.S.-crewed missions to the Moon’s floor, resulting in a sustained presence on the Moon that can assist the company put together to ship astronauts to Mars.
