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 at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
NASA’s crawler-transporter 2 began its 4-mile trek with the integrated SLS and Orion stacked on top of the mobile launcher at 12:20 a.m. EDT. Moving at a maximum speed of just 0.82 mph, the crawler carried the 322-foot-tall Moon rocket and spacecraft slowly and steadily toward the pad.
Now that the rocket is at Pad 39B, NASA teams are gearing up for the final stretch of prelaunch preparations ahead of launch as soon as Wednesday, April 1. The early April launch window includes opportunities through Monday, April 6.
Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, and Mission Specialist Christina Koch of NASA, along with CSA’s (Canadian Space Agency) Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen will embark on a 10-day journey around the Moon and back.
As part of a Golden Age of innovation and exploration, Artemis II is another step toward new U.S.-crewed missions to the Moon’s surface, leading to a sustained presence on the Moon that will help the agency prepare to send astronauts to Mars.