Kamal Ghorui
Nasa on Friday set March 6 as the earliest possible launch date for Artemis II, the first crewed mission to fly around the Moon in more than five decades.Senior Nasa official Lori Glaze said additional work at the launch pad and a full dress rehearsal must still be completed before the agency can lock in the date.“We need to successfully navigate all of those, but assuming that happens, it puts us in a very good position to target March 6,” news agency AP reported Glaze as saying.The timeline comes after Nasa successfully completed a critical rocket fueling test, clearing a major hurdle toward a March launch. Administrator Jared Isaacman said launch teams made “major progress” between the first countdown rehearsal earlier this month, which was halted by hydrogen leaks, and the second test, completed Thursday night without significant leakage.The successful test marked “a big step toward America’s return to the lunar environment,” Isaacman wrote on the social media platform X.Nasa could send four astronauts on the Artemis II lunar flyby as early as March 6 from Kennedy Space Center. To preserve launch flexibility, the crew—three Americans and one Canadian—entered a mandatory two-week health quarantine on Friday night.The agency has a narrow launch window, with just five viable days in March before the mission would be delayed until April. February launch opportunities were scrapped after hazardous levels of liquid hydrogen leaked during the initial fueling demonstration.Technicians later replaced two faulty seals, paving the way for Thursday’s successful rerun, during which the countdown reached the planned 29-second mark.While the fixes proved effective, additional steps remain, including a formal flight readiness review, Glaze said.Commander Reid Wiseman and two crewmates observed Thursday’s operation alongside launch controllers. The mission’s astronauts will be the first humans to journey toward the Moon since Apollo 17 concluded Nasa’s original lunar programme in 1972.
